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48Articial Hand, Real FeelingBusiness Report p. 61Data & Decision MakingDemo p. 84Of-the-Grid Power*Google is number three. Find out who ranks higher in our fth annual tally of the 50 Smartest Companies in the world, starting on page 26.MAR/APR 2014 $5.99The Smartest Company in the World. And Its NotGoogle.*MA14_cover.indd 1 2/5/14 4:47 PMIntroducing the K900, from Kia.2015 K900 V8 expected Spring 2014. Initially only available in select markets with limited availability. 2015 K900 V8 prototype shown with optional features. Not all features are available on all trim levels. THE MATRIX, THE MATRIX RELOADED, THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS: & Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s14) They say that tradition is what makes a luxury sedan, but is that truly the case? Or can luxury simply be defined by the way something looks? The way it feels? The way it makes you feel? Perhaps its the way it makes others feel about you? While some will cling to the notion that heritage is what makes a luxury sedan, the open-minded will form an opinion of their own. Challenge the luxury you know.

FS:7.5625Untitled-2 3 2/6/14 6:11 PM2TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2From the Editorthe 50 companies on our annual list of the smartest businesses in the world (page 26) make disruptive technologies. The phrase is much abused by technolo-gists. Mostly, it just means new and good. Insofar as it can be used precisely, it must be employed as Clayton Chris-tensen, the Harvard Business School professor who coined the phrase, intended: he wanted to convey the idea that certain innovations possess attri-butes that create new (initially low-end) markets and displace existing businesses. The 50 are ranked more or less arbi-trarily. Nonetheless, three companies Illumina, Tesla, and Googlejusti-ably lead our list, by virtue of the dis-ruptiveness of their technologies and the intelligence with which they built their businesses. Illumina, the smartest of all, wowed us. The company exploits the fundamen-tal copying mechanism of DNA in order to read the sequence of a human genome. (The process is called sequencing by synthesis: uorescently labeled bases are added to single DNA strands from a sample and read, in massively multi-plexed fashion.) Through technology it invented or acquired from Solexa, Illu-mina has forced an astounding increase in the pace of sequencing and an equally astounding drop in sequencings cost (ve times faster than Moores Law). Illu-minas machines are beautiful to con-template: so slick they dont have a single button and so powerful they can generate a genome for $1,000. (By contrast, the Human Genome Project cost $3 billion; as recently as 2006, it cost $10 million to sequence a human genome.) Illuminas technology is truly dis-ruptive. In richer countries, everyones genomes will be decoded. The impact will be new categories of drugs, better match-ing of therapeutics to the patients who will benet most, and startling insights into what makes us human. Elsewhere in the issue, we describe two other disruptive technologies: Google Glass (see Glass, Darkly, by Simson Garnkel, page 70) and Bitcoin (which is owned by no company: see Marginally Useful, by Paul Ford, page 80). Glass, Garnkel writes, fundamen-tally transforms human-computer interactions, making them more inti-mate. Ford says, Today, there are thou-sands of people loyal to the ideology and opportunities that Bitcoin represents. They imagine a world where economies are less dependent on banks and govern-ments, and theyre actually using Bitcoin, often in disruptive ways.But Illuminas technology, Glass, and Bitcoin are not only disruptive (in the sense that new markets for novel things displace older markets and things, and all the associated human habits that attached themselves to those old things). The developer and blogger Dave Winer recently wrote, Every [successful] prod-uct is both disruptive and construc-tive. It disrupts someones business, and adds new art. This must be right; new technologies would not be embraced if they were merely destructive. Successful products always ofer more to customers (or to some powerful component of soci-ety) than the costs of their adoption.Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University, likes to say, Its not a revo-lution if nobody loses. With a little science-ctional speculation, one can imagine the negative consequences of genome sequencing, Glass, and Bit-coin, and one can guess who would suf-fer most if they were broadly adopted. (Briey: communities with genetic defects, who could face discrimination or be edited out of existence; we who care about privacy; and anyone who has ever beneted from monetary policy.) But, equally, its true that there are no revolu-tions if no one benets. Therefore that it may raise up, technology throws down. GUIDO

VITTIMA14_editor.indd 2 2/6/14 11:36 AMNI LabVIEW is the only comprehensive development environment with the unprecedented hardware integration and wide-ranging compatibility you need to meet any measurement and control application challenge. And LabVIEW is at the heart of the graphical system design approach, which uses an open platform of productive software and recongurable hardware to accelerate the development of your system.Innite Designs, One Platformwith the only complete system design environmentLabVIEW system design software offers unrivaled hardware integration and helps you program the way you thinkgraphically. 800 453 6202>> Accelerate your system design productivity at ni.com/labview-platform 2012 National Instruments. All rights reserved. LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI, and ni.comare trademarks of National Instruments. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. 0801008010 NI_2012_Infinite Designs Ad.indd 1 10/2/12 1:46 PMOVH_TR0413.indd 1 1/25/13 3:08 PM

Back BUSINESS REPORT61 Data and Decision MakingNew tools help businesses make choices. REVIEWS70 Glass, DarklyGoogle would love to convince you that Glass isnt creepy.By Simson Garinkel78 Making ConversationThe AI assistant in Her was bunk. But real-life ones could make us better people.By Greg Egan80 Marginally UsefulBitcoin has issues, but the underlying technology may grow into something better.By Paul Ford DEMO84 Storing the SunA startup thinks its solved a big solar-power riddle.By Kevin Bullis YEARS AGO88 Slow MotionA 1985 article surveyed the prospects of enabling the paralyzed to walk again.Contents26 | 50 Smartest Companies 2014These technology companies are establishing themselves as leaders or toppling giantsor both. Name recognition doesnt matter on this list. Its about the companies that are changing things right now. 48 | An Articial Hand with Real FeelingA new nerve interface puts a sense of touch into a prosthetic limb. By David Talbot54 | Genome SurgeryEasy ways to rewrite genes could nally lead to cures for our most deadly genetic diseases. By Susan YoungMarch/April 2014You feel me? p. 48RYAN

TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. | NO. FeedbackFive Most Popular StoriesMIT Technology Review Volume 117, Number 1GMOsDavid Rotmans article makes a great point, show-ing that low public opinion and high risk make funding research near impossible for all but large companies. As a native Floridian, I am deeply concerned with the future of the Florida citrus industry, which is threat-ened by a citrus greening disease. A couple of genes from spinach could save this crop. wdezernThe aw in Rotmans article is the idea that we need GMOs to increase the food supply to keep up with population growth. If somehow we do expand the food supply through GMOs or any other gim-mick, we will only beget more people. lapThinking in SiliconThis is a great arti-cle because this is a paradigm-shifting line of research. Arguments about whether we are going to have a computer with human intelligence have their place,but that place is principally philosophical. The real question is simple: can it work better?woodstock DanThis is impressive science. Since the drone industry is so clearly salivating over this research, I suggest that one early application would be reliably diferenti-ating wedding processions from terrorist convoys. lmkoryToo Much InformationThe article asks, do we have the wisdom to direct our own evolution? Well, dont women do that already? They choose their sexual partner.Cathal HaughianClearly this will impact the business of articial fer-tilization. Let a collection of eggs be fertilized and analyze them, then pick the ones with the most desired traits. Possibly ofer a couple of key edits via CRISPR to eliminate inheritable mutations like BRCA and all descendants will be free of it.Gattaca,anyone? SanescienceQ&A: Danah Boyd National crime statistics show that children are not in more danger from pred-ators than they were in the 1950s or 1960s. What has changed is our aware-ness of crime due to the 24-hour news cycle. Its no wonder parents worry, but yes, it is safe to let your kids out of the house. Ironically, one danger that has increased slightly is your childs odds of being struck by a vehicle while crossing the street. Why? Because he or she may be distracted by the phone. verticalThe Continuous Productivity of Aaron LevieI began using Box because I liked the sites straight-forward visual presenta-tion and felt free of the Big Brother vibe that compa-nies like Google exude. It wasnt until I taught devel-opmental English at a local community college that I realized the ease of col-laboration ofered by Box. Using Box was simple enough to introduce to technologically challenged students, who lost many excuses like I forgot my essay, and peer collabo-ration was more stream-lined through Box than it was through the colleges online course component.Mrs_Moore1 2 3 4 5MA14_feedback.indd 8 2/5/14 8:37 AME-mail letters@technologyreview.comWrite MIT Technology Review One Main Street, 13th Floor Cambridge, MA 02142Please include your address, telephone number, and e-mail address. Letters and comments may be edited for both clarity and length.Are GMOs Worth the Trouble?in why we will need genetically Modied Foods, David Rotman argues that we ll need GMOs to deal with an increasing population and climate change. He bases his argument, in part, on the presumption that plant breed-ingone alternative to GMOsis too slow and wont adapt to climate change in a way that will increase yields enough.Many breeders and molecular biolo-gists would disagree. Research on many major crops over the past 20 years has shown that current widely grown crop varieties use only a small fraction of their genetic potential. The so-called yield plateau of the last several decades in some crops is more likely due to com-placency after the green revolution than to deciencies in breeding potential.While breeding continues to meet important challenges like improving drought tolerance, improving nitrogen fertilizer efciency, or increasing yield, genetic engineering has contributed little or nothing. There is now one vari-ety of genetically modied corn, toler-ant to moderate drought, which would improve overall productivity by only about 1 percent in the United States. By contrast, breeding and agronomy have improved corn drought tolerance by about 1 percent per year over the past three decades. And what about nongenetic alterna-tives? Rotmans argument completely neglects these means to increase food security. One prominent environmental scientist, Jonathan Foley of the Univer-sity of Minnesota, concluded in a recent article that while future genetically modied crops could add other bene-cial plant traits, which might help boost productivity in crucial crops, I think the best answers lie elsewhere. He pointed to alternatives, including reducing food waste, reducing our consumption of animal products, and reducing the amount of food crops used for biofuels. And using agroecology-based meth-ods greatly improves sustainability and resilience.Its worth noting that theres no real consensus on GMO crop safety. Although many of the crops may well be benign, some could be harmful, prompt-ing unresolved questions about the ade-quacy of current regulations. There are other substantial unre-solved challenges associated with GMOs, including the high economic concentration of the seed industry, facil-itated by gene patents. The main uses of the technology also seem to encourage the expansion of industrial monoculture farming, with all its problems. And most of the pipeline for genetically modied foods is more of the sameherbicide-resistant crops that will only, in the end, exacerbate pesticide use.Doug Gurian-Sherman is a senior scientist in the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprot science advocacy group.David Rotman responds:after interviewing more than a dozen plant breeders, some of whom are also molecular biologists, I found none as sanguine as Gurian- Sherman about the ability of conventional breed-ing methods to keep up with population growth and the negative impacts of cli-mate change. These scientists work all over the world, and they had the same message: genetic modication could be a vital tool in plant breeding. The problem with Gurian-Shermans argument is the sweeping dismissal of GM technology. Of course GMOs should be regulated and monitored. And of course there are other things that should be done (is anyone against reducing food waste)? But that doesnt exclude researching the potential for future ver-sions of genetically modied crops. Nova Scotia 10 DAYS $1395 with Prince Edward Island and New BrunswickWelcome to Canadas Atlantic Coast, a land blessed with stunning natural beauty and a relaxed way of life. Visit all three Maritime Provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.Join the smart shoppers and experienced travelers who rely on Caravan to handle all the details while you and your family enjoy a well-earned, worry-free vacation. Free Vacation Catalog Caravan.com 1-800-CaravanCall now for choice dates!Affordable Guided VacationsLATIN AMERICA Guatemala, Tikal 10 days $1195 Costa Rica 9 days $1095 Panama, Canal 8 days $1195CANADA Nova Scotia, P.E.I. 10 days $1395 Canadian Rockies 9 days $1595UNITED STATES Grand Canyon 8 days $1395 Mt. 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Top clockwise: Prince Edward Island; Louisbourg lighthouse; Cape Breton whale watching; Halifax waterfront; Peggys Cove; Cabot TrailTax, fees extraMA14_feedback.indd 9 2/5/14 5:36 PM10TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2Viewsmutation, in 26 percent of unexplained diseases we have taken on. The national rate of success without sequencing the genome is between 5 and 10 percent.Being able to routinely use genome-wide sequencing in the clinic should make it possible to treat patients with an eye to their genetic predisposi-tion toward specic diseases and their responsiveness to particular treatments. We already have evidence that this can improve success rates and reduce costs, which should make these technologies appealing to health insurers.However, we arent there yet. More genomic data must be gathered and shared if we are to understand it well enough to afect clinical outcomes on a large scale. We must also remember that a genome sequence is only the rst step; it must be followed up with genetic counseling and evidence-based care. Ethics must also be part of the discus-sion, because decisions about genomic screening afect generations to come. Now that the technology needed to deliver the $1,000 genome has arrived, we must determine the best way to use this information to save lives.Howard Jacob is director of the Human and Molecular Genetics Center at the Medi-cal College of Wisconsin.COMPUTINGGlass AllowedHostility to the use of wearable computers and cameras threatens to limit their benets, says Steve Mann.Many of us who use a wearable computer to augment our vision have come to rely on it as our normal way of seeing, under-standing, and making sense of the world. As we get older, whether we become reli-ant on the technology through loss of natural function or merely grow further MEDICINECheap GenomicsNow that genomes can be sequenced for $1,000, more patients can benet, says Howard Jacob.The quest for the $1,000 genome sequence began in December 2001 at the National Human Genome Research Institutes scientic retreat. That quest appears to have been completed with Illuminas January announcement of the HiSeqX Ten machine (see Illumina, page 28). Fifteen years after the rst human genome was sequenced at a cost of $2.7 billion, we are at the dawn of a new era in medicine.Many more genomes will now be sequenced, and they will be sequenced in much more detail. Today, because examining the whole genome has been so costly, most clinical and research labs look only at the exome, the roughly 1.5 percent of the genome associated with known functions. You might say that we are only looking where we under-stand. The ability to sequence the whole genome afordably will now generate an abundance of data and an opportunity to understand the importance of many more genetic variants. Sequencing the entire genome typically nds hundreds of times as much variation between any two individuals as just sequencing their exomes, most of it in regions of the genome that are poorly understood.Learning the functions of those regions will help scientists better under-stand diseases, drug side efects, and the mechanisms by which the genome func-tions. Early eforts to use whole-genome sequencing in health care have produced promising results. In our clinic at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Chil-drens Hospital of Wisconsin, we have already used whole-genome sequenc-ing to identify the causative variant, or ILLUSTRATIONS

BY

SAM

KERRHoward JacobDavid YermackSteve MannMA14_views.indd 10 2/4/14 4:06 PMUntitled-1 1 2/4/14 1:14 PM12TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2Viewsacclimated to it from many years of use, it becomes a part of our own selves in mind, body, and spirit.This technology is only now becom-ing available for large numbers of peo-ple to use (see Glass, Darkly, page 70). But it has already started to be banned in some places. For someone who has been inventing, designing, building, and wearing such devices for more than 30 years, and who founded MITs wearable- computing project more than 20 years ago, being forbidden to use this tech-nology feels like an afront to bodily integrity. These devices are not simply pieces of clothing or a variation on con-ventional eyewear. They have profound efects on how we see, understand, and remember the world.As more people grow to depend on this technology in all facets of their lives (for example, as a memory aid or face recognizer), we must balance their rights with the desire to allow other people pri-vacy and condentiality. It is absurd to forbid people to remember things. Imag-ine an elderly gentleman being asked his whereabouts on a particular night, to which he replies, I was not allowed to remember. We cant hold people respon-sible for their actions if we prevent them from doing what it takes to recall them.My six-year-old daughter once asked me, Why do buildings and cars have the right to wear a camera at all times, but people dont? Our society has decided that organizations and businesses always have the right to use a camera for secu-rity, but the right to wear a camera as an assistive device seems less assured. Lets value people at least as much as we do merchandise and elevate the wearable computer to the level of a secu-rity camera. We never forbid cameras to protect ve-cent candies. So lets not forbid people to protect themselves with this same kind of technology. I have pro-posed legislation to protect the right of individuals to remember, computation-ally, what they experience.As wearable computers and cameras become more widespread, we will cer-tainly need to adopt new protocols and social attitudes toward the capture and sharing of visual information and other data. But these protocols should not include discrimination against users of these valuable assistive devices.Steve Mann is chief scientist at the wearable- computing company MetaView and a professor at the University of Toronto.MONEYBitcoin EconomicsThe digital cash lacks most of the features economists value in a currency, says David Yermack.Bitcoin became a sensation in 2013, when the value of a single unit of the virtual currency rose from $13 to more than $1,000 and people began to use it for daily commerce (see chart on page 18). Travelers toured the world subsist-ing on bitcoins. A Bitcoin ATM appeared in a Vancouver cofee shop. And a U.S. Senate committee held hearings at which regulators commented favorably on Bit-coin and other virtual currencies.Bitcoin is not issued by a govern-ment or a business but by computer code that runs on a decentralized, volun-tary network. It has found users among computer enthusiasts and opponents of the banking system (see Marginally Useful, page 80). However, economists remain skeptical of Bitcoins staying power because it lacks many attributes of a useful currency. Money is supposed to serve three purposes: it functions as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Bitcoin arguably satises the rst criterion, because a growing number of merchants accept it as payment. But it performs poorly as a unit of account and a store of value.Bitcoins extreme uctuations undermine any useful function for it in these roles. During 2013 its volatil-ity was three to four times higher than that of a typical stock, and its exchange rate with the dollar was about 10 times more volatile than those of the euro, yen, and other major currencies. Bit-coins dollar price exhibits no correlation with the dollars exchange rates against other currencies. Nor does it correlate with the value of gold. With a currency whose value is so untethered, it is nearly impossible to hedge against risk.Bitcoin also lacks additional char-acteristics usually associated with cur-rencies. It cannot be deposited in a bank; instead it must be held in digi-tal wallets that have proved vulnerable to thieves and hackers. There is noth-ing comparable to the deposit insur-ance relied on by banking consumers. No lenders use bitcoins as the unit of account for consumer credit, auto loans, or mortgages, and no credit or debit cards are denominated in bitcoins.Even if volatility subsides and the currency nds a place in the world pay-ments system, it has another fatal eco-nomic aw. Only 21 million units can ever be issued, and a xed money supply is incompatible with a growing economy. In a bitcoin-dominated economy, work-ers would have to accept pay cuts every year, and prices for goods would gradu-ally fall. Such conditions might lead to public unrest reminiscent of the late 19th centurys free-silver and populist movementsan ironic consequence of a currency known for its futuristic cachet.David Yermack is a professor at the New York University Stern School of Business and director of the NYU Pollack Center for Law and Business.MA14_views.indd 12 2/4/14 4:06 PMCome to MIT for a WeekSHORT PROGRAMSRegister for a 2 5 day intensive course and gain critical knowledge to help advance your career and impact your companys success. Earn CEUs and a certicate of completion.Each year approximately 40 courses are offered in a variety of subject areas (partial listing below):Come to MIT for a SemesterADVANCED STUDY PROGRAMEnroll in regular MIT courses through this non-matriculating, non-degree program. Participate on a full or part-time basis for one or more semesters.As an Advanced Study Program participant you can: hAdvance your knowledge in the latest technologies and cutting edge research hLearn from world renowned faculty hTailor studies to meet individual or company needs hChoose from over 2,000 MIT undergraduate and graduate courses hEarn grades, MIT credit, and a Certicate of CompletionYOUR DOOR TO MIT EXPERTISE & KNOWLEDGETRAINING & EDUCATION FOR PROFESSIONALSMASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYTo learn more about what MIT Professional Education can offer you and your company, visit us today at HTTP://PROFESSIONALEDUCATION.MIT.EDU/TECHREVIEW or email us at PROFESSIONALEDUCATION@MIT.EDU.Bring MIT to You CUSTOM PROGRAMSEnhance your organizations capabilities and expertise through customized programs tailored to meet your specic needs and priorities. INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMSFind out about regionally relevant MIT short courses being offered in various locations around the world. h Biotechnology / Pharmaceutical h Crisis Management h Data Modeling & Analysis h Design, Analysis, & Manufacturing h Energy / Sustainability / Transportation h Imaging h Information & Communication Technologies h Innovation h Leadership / Negotiation h Radar h Robotics h Systems Engineering h TribologyMITPROFED.indd 1 6/4/13 4:25 PMMore than an eventlike mappin the enome was more than a science projectValuable education, partnering, global networking, exhibits and entertainment makes BIO 2014 much more than an event. The BIO International Convention regularly attracts 15,000 of the most powerful biotech and pharma players from 60+ countries, and every year we work to improve the experience. This year is no exception, with more networking, insight and opportunities delivering value to you and your business long after the event ends. Join us in San Diego and discover where BIO 2014 can take you. Register now. Early bird discount ends May 1.convention.bio.org #BIO2014BIO14_ad_Boy_MITR.indd 1 2/4/14 3:52 PMUntitled-2 1 2/4/14 5:22 PM15TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 116 | NO. 2YAREK

WASZULUpfrontFor the Wary, an Alternative to Trusting the CloudThe company behind BitTorrent offers software that replicates most features of file-synching services but keeps you in control of your data.By Tom SimoniteThe debate over how much we should trust cloud companies with our data was reawak-ened last year after revelations that the Nat i onal Sec ur i t y Agency routinely harvests data from Internet companies including Google, Mi crosof t, Yahoo, and Facebook. BitTorrent, the company behind the sometimes controversial le-sharing pro-tocol of the same name, is hoping this debate will drive adoption of its new le-synching technology. Called BitTorrent Sync, it synchro-nizes folders and les on diferent com-puters and mobile devices much the way services like Dropbox do, but without ever copying data to a central cloud server.Cloud-based file-synching services route all data via their own servers and keep a copy of it there. The BitTorrent software instead has devices contact one another directly over the Internet to update les as they are added or changed.MA14_upfront.indd 15 2/5/14 1:43 PM16TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 116 | NO. 2That diference in design means that people using BitTorrent Sync dont have to worry about whether the cloud com-pany hosting their data is properly secur-ing it against rogue employees or other threats.Forgoing the cloud also means that the NSA or another agency couldnt har-vest data shared using BitTorrent Sync without going directly to the person or company controlling the synched devices. Synched data does travel over the Inter-net, where it might be intercepted by a surveillance agency such as the NSA, but it travels in a strongly encrypted form. The drawback of BitTorrent Syncs design is that two devices must be online at the same time for them to synchronize, since theres no intermediary server to act as an always-on source.BitTorrent Sync is available now as a free download for PCs and mobile devices, but in a beta version that is not as polished or easy to use as many other applications. BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker says the next version, due this spring, will feature major upgrades that will make the software as user-friendly as established cloud-based competitors.Klinker says BitTorrent Sync shows how popular applications can be rede-signed to give people control of their own data, despite prevailing trends. Pick any Upfrontapp on the Web todayit could be Twitter, e-mail, searchand it has been developed in a very centralized way; those businesses are built around centralizing information on their servers, he says. Im trying to put more power in the hands of the end user and less in the hands of these companies and other centralizing authorities.Anonymous data sent back to BitTor-rent by its software indicates that more than two million people are already using it each month. Some of those people have found uses that go beyond just managing les. For example, the company says one author in Beijing uses BitTorrent Sync to distribute blog posts on topics that pro-voke scrutiny from Chinese authorities. And one U.S. programmer built a secure, decentralized messaging system on top of the software.Klinker says that companies are also starting to use BitTorrent Sync to avoid the costs of cloud-based solutions. He plans to eventually make the software pay for itself by nding a way to sell extra ser-vices to corporate users.Given its emphasis on transparency and data ownership, BitTorrent has been criticized by some for not releasing the source code for its application. Klinker says he understands those concerns and may yet decide to do so. Jacob Williams, a digital forensic sci-entist with CSR Group, says the current stance is defensible, although he gener-ally considers open-source programs to be more secure. But nding subtly placed vulnerabilities in open-source software is still challenging, and the projects can be split of into diferent versions, which reduces the number of people scrutinizing any one version.Williamss own research has shown how Dropbox and similar services could be used to slip malicious software through corporate rewalls. They are congured to use the same route as Web traf c, which usually gets a free pass. BitTorrent Sync is congured slightly diferently, he says, but it will likely require changes to the re-wall in any moderately secure network. If someone cuts your finger off, you have bigger problems. Sebastian Taveau, former chief technology of cer of Validity, on why ngerprint sensors make for better protection than passwords.QUOTEDIm trying to put more power in the hands of the end user, BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker says.TO MARKETGaze GamingEyeXCOMPANY: Tobii TechnologyPRICE: $195AVAILABILITY:MarchThe EyeX from Swedish com-pany Tobii Technology is intended to help game devel-opers prepare for the release of the rst eye-tracking video-game controller later this year. The EyeX uses infrared light and a camera to track the reec-tions from a players pupils and determine the direction of his or her gaze. In demonstrations, this allowed game avatars to be guided by a players eyes and let players change their on-screen weaponry simply by looking at a listed option. The same technology will appear this summer in a game control-ler made by Tobii in partnership with SteelSeries, which makes gaming peripherals. When the game controller launches, it will bring eye- tracking capabilities to approximately 100 games. COURTESY

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PRICE$400$200JUNE Press reports on Silk Road, where bitcoins could buy illegal drugs, draw attention to the currency, and the value of a bitcoin spikes.2FEBRUARY The market price of a bitcoin surpasses $1 for the rst time.1Chinese authorities block payments to Bitcoin exchanges, and the price drops to around $700 before rebounding.DECEMBER 9OCTOBER Baidu says it will accept bitcoins, and the U.S. government shutdown inspires bitcoin hoarding. The price rises rapidly and briey tops $1,200.8OCTOBER The FBI shuts down Silk Road, and the market price dips.7MARCH The value of all circulating bitcoins passes $1 billion.6MARCH EU authorities seize funds in Cypriot banks; some people seek refuge by buying bitcoins.5JUNE The price of a bitcoin reaches $30, then falls after the largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, is hacked.3FEBRUARY The popularity of bitcoin gambling websites grows, and the price of a bitcoin surpasses $30.4MA14_upfront.indd 18 2/5/14 5:14 PM19TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 116 | NO. 2A Brain-Inspired Chip Helps Smartphones Spot FacesHardware created to run neural networks will help smartphones make sense of the world.By Tom SimoniteA powerful approach to artificial intelligence could be coming to smartphones. Researchers from Purdue University are working to com-mercialize designs for a chip meant to help mobile processors make use of the AI method known as deep learning. Google, Facebook, and Baidu have invested in deep-learning technology, but so far it has been limited to large clusters of high- powered computers. When Google devel-oped software that learned to recognize cats in YouTube videos, for instance, the experiment required 16,000 processors.Being able to implement deep learn-ing in more compact and power-efcient ways could lead to smartphones and other mobile devices that can understand the content of images and video, says Eugenio Culurciello, a Purdue professor who is working on the project. In December, at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference in Nevada, the group demon-strated that a co-processor connected to a conventional smartphone processor could help it run deep-learning software. The software was able to detect faces or label parts of a street scene. The co-processors design was tested on an FPGA, a recon-gurable chip that can be programmed to test new hardware designs. The prototype is less powerful than Googles cat detector, but it shows how new forms of hardware could make it possible to use the power of deep learning more widely. Theres a need for this, says Culurciello. You prob-ably have a collection of several thousand images that you never look at again, and we dont have a good technology to analyze all this content.Devices such as Google Glass could also benet from the ability to understand the many pictures and videos they are capturing. A persons images and videos might be searchable using textred car or sunny day with Mom, for example. Likewise, novel apps could be developed that take action when they recognize par-ticular people, objects, or scenes.Deep-learning software works by l-tering data through a hierarchical, multi-layered network of simulated neurons that are individually simple but can exhibit complex behavior when linked together. Computers are inefcient at simulating those networks because the networks are very diferent from conventional software. Purdues co-processor design is specialized to run multilayered neural networks and put them to work on streaming imagery. In tests, the prototype has proved about 15 times more efcient than a graphics pro-cessor for the same task, and Culurciello believes that improvements could make the system 10 times more efcient than it is now.Narayan Srinivasa, director of the cen-ter for neural and emergent systems at HRL Laboratories, a research lab jointly owned by Boeing and General Motors, says it makes sense to use separate hard-ware to implement deep learning because, like real neural networks, it can intertwine memory and processing. His own research focuses on addressing that problem with a more extreme solution: designing chips with silicon neurons and synapses that mimic those of real brains. Culurciello has started a company, called TeraDeep, to commercialize his own designs.The number of chips Google used to teach its deep-learning software to recognize cats in YouTube videos 16,000 Deep learning could let smartphones understand the content of images.ILLUSTRATION

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3M.!Touch screens could become larger and more exible thanks to these transparent lms made of silver nano wires. The lms, which 3M is producing for device makers, use nano-technology from a startup called Cambrios. Its wires, which are a few nanometers in diameter and a few microm-eters long, come suspended in inks; Cambrios claims that electrodes made from these inks are more conductive and transparent than the most commonly used materials and can be rolled and unrolled more than 100,000 times with-out breaking, making curvy or foldable devices possible. In contrast, todays touch screens are made of brittle indium tin oxide lms, which limits their size and design. TO MARKETSmarter Screens

3M Patterned Silver Nanowire FilmCOMPANY: 3MPRICE: Not disclosedAVAILABILITY: NowMA14_upfront.indd 19 2/5/14 1:43 PM20TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 116 | NO. 2Battery Material Could Help Wind and Solar Power Scale UpNovel materials ow from the containers into a fuel-cell-like device in the foreground, where they generate electricity.Low-cost materials could make storing hours of power from a wind farm economically feasible.By Kevin BullisUtilities would love to be able to store the power that wind farms generate at night and use it when demand is high during the day. But con-ventional battery technology is so expen-sive that it only makes economic sense to store a few minutes of electricity.Harvard University researchers say theyve developed a new type of battery that could make it economical to store a couple of days worth of electricity from wind farms and other sources. The new battery is based on an organic moleculecalled a quinonethats found in plants such as rhubarb and can be cheaply syn-thesized from crude oil. The molecules could reduce by two-thirds the cost of the materials in a type of battery called a ow battery, which is particularly well suited to storing large amounts of energy.In a ow battery, energy is stored in liquid form in large tanks. Such batter-ies have been around for decades, but theyre expensivethey cost about $700 per kilowatt- hour of storage capacity, according to one estimate. To make stor-ing hours of energy from wind farms eco-nomical, batteries need to cost just $100 per kilowatt-hour, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.Michael Aziz, a professor of mate-rials and energy technologies at Har-vard University, who led the work, says the quinones will cut the cost of energy storage materials down to just $27 per kilowatt- hour. Combined with other recent advances that have brought down costs for the rest of the system, he says, this could put the DOE target in reach.The Harvard work is the first dem-onstration by researchers of high- performance flow batteries that use organic molecules instead of the metal ions usually used. The quinones are eas-ily modied, which might make it possible to improve their performance and reduce costs further. The options for metal ions were pretty well worked through, Aziz says. Weve now introduced a vast new set of materials.After identifying quinones as poten-tial energy storage molecules, the Har-vard researchers used high-throughput screening techniques to sort through 10,000 variants, searching for ones that had all the right properties for a batterythe right voltage levels, the ability to with-stand charging and discharging, and the ability to be dissolved in water so they could be stored in liquid tanks. So far the researchers are using quinones only for the negative side of the battery. The positive side uses bromine, a corrosive and toxic material. The researchers are developing new versions of the quinones that could replace the bromine. They are working with the startup Sustainable Innovations to develop a battery as big as a horse trailer, which could be used to store power from solar panels on com-mercial buildings.The researchers face competition from other startups developing cheaper ow batteries, such as EnerVault and Sun Catalytix. EnerVault uses iron and chro-mium as its storage materials. Sun Cata-lytix is developing inorganic molecules to improve performance and lower cost.Currently, it only makes economic sense to store a few minutes of electricity.The price per kilowatt-hour that the DOE says would make storing energy from wind farms economical $100UpfrontCOURTESY

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TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. | NO. James KufnerAt a military contest in Miami, a Google scientist discusses the future of robotics.What can you tell me about why Google bought Boston Dynamics and several other robotics companies?Nothing right now.Well, what do you nd exciting about this contest? I think setting up these challenges is a good way to motivate people to work on hard problems and bring together the best hardware and soft-ware to make these machines do useful tasks. Its going to take a lot of hard work to make these robots achieve the same level of perfor-mance and agility that humans and animals have. I think thats some-thing to motivate everyone .Is this technology at an earlier stage than the self-driving cars at previous DARPA challenges?The original DARPA challenge for autonomous vehicles basically came down to waypoint following and GPS, and then of course as it pro-gressed to the Urban Challenge it became much more complicated . [At this challenge], these tasks cer-tainly may look easy, especially for a human, but theyre very, very dif-cult . You cant yet buy these robots, so theyre very much research pro-totypes. But I feel like in the last 20 years theres been incredible accel-eration, and Im really excited to see this much efort and attention being paid to try and make the robots do something practical. Will Knight QUESTIONSSmart Radios Reduce Smartphone Battery DrainThe battle between device makers is moving from software to hardware.By David TalbotThe wireless industry faces a fun-damental problem: more features and faster data transmission are draining phone batteries faster than ever.Fortunately, theres room for improve-ment inside the devices, in parts known as power ampliers that turn electricity into radio energy. In phones, these parts typically consume more power than any other component and waste half of it along the way .Now an effort is under way to develop power ampli-ers that signicantly reduce waste. Eta Devices, an MIT spinof based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is preparing a base station module and a chip that it says not only decrease battery drain but work well in high-bandwidth applications for ultrafast technologies. Existing power ampli-ers maintain their voltage at a fairly high level at all times to be prepared for peak needsbut this is wasteful. Newer approaches adjust that level on the y, following the envelope of the actual radio signal.Such envelope tracking, or ET, tech-nologies are the hottest hardware devel-opment in the mobile-phone industry. Last fall Qualcomm became the rst com-pany to ship a chip with such technology. The company says the chip helps lower electricity consumption by 20 percent and helps reduce a related problemheat generationby up to 30 percent, allowing for longer battery life for end users, as well as enabling manufacturers to shrink the size of their devices, says Peter Carson, Qualcomms senior direc-tor of marketing. The dif culty with ET, though, is that its ef ciency plunges at higher data rates. Envelope trackers often require a rela-tively large capacitor to store and release bursts of energy while maintaining smooth and continuous voltage changes.Eta Devices takes a radically difer-ent approach, favoring fast, abrupt changes wi th a smaller capacitor. Mattias strm, the company presi-dent, reaches for an auto-motive analogy to compare the two approaches. Envelope tracking is basically a con-tinuous variable transmission, compared to our manual gearbox, he says. Fuel con-sumption is always better when you have a manual gearbox.The chip is now being fabricated for the rst time, but the concept has been built out for base stations and may be commercialized this year. The Eta mod-ule, a little smaller than a shoebox, is the rst 4G LTE transmitter in the world to achieve average efficiency greater than 70 percent, a big jump from the 45 to 55 percent in currently available technology, says Eta cofounder Joel Dawson. SAM

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22TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 116 | NO. 2Upfrontthere are plenty of places to seek answers to questions, including search engines like Google and Q&A sites like Quora. Now Jelly, a startup cre-ated by Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, is squishing its way into the fray with a free smartphone app that lets you ask questions attached to images and give answers to people in your extended social network.Like Twitter, which faced much skep-ticism early on, Jelly has plenty of folks raising an eyebrow in its direction while trying to gure out what its good for. I spent two days trying out Jel- ly on my iPhone (its available for iOS and Android right of the bat). Get-ting started is simple: after you connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts, you ll see a question in search of answers from one of your friends dominating the display, and you can tap to add an answer or read existing answers. If you want to ask a question, you have to take or import a photo, type a question, and submit it.Jelly will alert you when you receive an answer or someone likes an answer you supplied. You can send other users virtual thank-you notes for their answers.I had a hard time guring out what to ask early on, and I think many other users were (and are) in the same boat, as indicated by the overabundance of ques-REVIEW tions like What airport am I in? I spent a lot of time icking away questions that didnt deserve an answer.After a while, though, I started to see that much of Jellys potential lies in its ability to quickly gather a cho-Twitter Cofounder Wants You to Ask More QuestionsHis smartphone app Jelly makes it easy to get your friends advice on everything from shopping to Chopin.rus of opinions on everything from music and shopping to pet and plant care. As users figure this out, I expect the ratio of silly to earnest questions to improve.When I asked questions like Is it worth hiring a wedding photographer? I got many helpful responses, including some links to local photographers. I noticed others experimenting with Jellys recommendation potential, too. One guy wanted to know which shoes he should wear with his paisley shirt, while another asked about buying a cheap xed-gear bike. I gave my opinion on David Foster Wallaces epic Innite Jest and shared my surreal experience of watching US Airways Flight 1549 oat down the Hudson River in 2009. I felt a little thrill each time an alert informed me that someone had marked my answer as good.Still, Jelly really needs some other fea-tures. There is no categorization system for questions, theres no way to search, and, as many users noted, theres no back button within the app. There also doesnt seem to be an organized way to see only the questions youve asked or answered.Perhaps more important, Jelly needs to improve its ability to deter-mine which ques-tions you should see, so it can make it more likely that you ll offer helpful answers and contribute your own ques-tions. The app already uses an algorithm for this, but amassing a signicant vol-ume of data for it to learn from could take some time. In the meantime, I expect to keep seeing lots of questions about foot-ball teams, iPhone app organizing, and almond butter.Rachel MetzGallons of water that a proposed solar-thermal power plant in California would have used each yearQuestionsUsers are encour-aged to post ques-tions to their friends.SnapshotAn image must be included with all posts, which may encourage users to post while shopping.AnswersResponses to questions appear in tiles below.RACHEL

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TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. | NO. Those concerned about the health of their heart can now get expert consultations by smartphone. AliveCor, a com-pany that already makes an electrocardiogram device that plugs into an iPhone or Android device, has launched a service that connects patients to experts who will analyze their cardiac rhythms for a small fee. The system sends a persons EKG data to a cardiol-ogist or technician via a smart-phone app. It then delivers an analysis of the data within 30 minutes to 24 hours, depend-ing on the service selected. Readings from AliveCors device are less accurate than those from a 12-lead EKG machine, but reports can be sent to a doctor for further analysis. Ticker TrackingAliveInsightsCOMPANY: AliveCorPRICE: $2 to $12 per consultAVAILABILITY:Nowregenerate along more regulated pro-cesses, says Getts. Should the therapy translate to humans, he says, it could sub-stantially reduce the complications that some heart attack patients experience, including shortness of breath and limited ability to exercise. The goal is to begin human tests by early next year, and the company hopes that the simple mecha-nism of the therapy will speed the devel-opment process.However, there is still some home-work to do, says Matthias Nahrendorf, a professor of systems biology at Harvard. In particular, researchers will have to tease out any side efects the micropar-ticles might produce. The particles may activate the immune system in some yet-unknown way, he says. In addition, Nahrendorf says, it will be important to determine how to administer the therapy so that it doesnt compromise the cells ability to aid healing and defend the body against infections and other invaders.I dont necessarily want a cloud service to know every single time I walk in and out of my front door. Liat Ben-Zur, head of Qualcomms AllJoyn unit, on the drawbacks of Internet-connected door locks.QUOTEDUpfrontHacking the Immune System to Lessen Heart Attack DamageMicroparticles that block the bodys immune response to damaged tissue could help prevent further harm.By Mike OrcuttUsing tiny biodegradable particles to disrupt the bodys immune response after a heart attack could help save patients from tissue damage and certain long-term health problems that often follow. Researchers have shown that inject-ing such particles into mice within 24 hours of a heart attack not only signif-icantly reduces tissue damage but also leaves those mice with stronger cardiac function 30 days later.Much of the tissue damage that results from a heart attack is due to inamma-tion, the bodys natural response to harm-ful stimuli such as muscle damage. But in the case of a heart attack, the resulting immune cells do more harm than good, explains Daniel Getts, inventor of the new therapy and chief scientic of cer of Cour Pharmaceutical Development.While the compounds that the immune cells secrete can be benecial in defending the body against an infection, they also cause tissue damage. This phe-nomenon occurs in a range of other dis-eases as well, including West Nile virus and multiple sclerosis.The 500-nanometer particles must be negatively charged and can be made of several diferent materials, including the one used for biodegradable sutures. The new research suggests that once the par-ticles are in the bloodstream, the negative charge attracts a specic receptor on the surface of inammatory monocytes. The particles bind to that receptor and divert the immune cells away from the heart and toward the spleen, where they die.Preventing these cells from reaching the heart allows the damaged muscle to The nanoparticles divert immune cells away from the heart and toward the spleen, where they die.TO MARKETCOURTESY

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BRODENMA14_50_illumina.indd 26 2/5/14 1:41 PM27MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 50 SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMit might sound difcult to denewhat makes a smart company, but you know one when you see it. When such a company commercializes a truly innovative technology, things happen: leadership in a market is bolstered or thrown up for grabs. Competitors have to rene or rethink their strategies.This is what the editors of MIT Technology Review looked for as we assembled this list. We didnt count patents or PhDs; instead, we asked whether a company had made strides in the past year that will dene its eld. The biggest of these strides happened at Illumina, which is driving down the price of DNA sequencing to levels that will change the practice of medicine. We also found dramatic developments on the Web, in batteries, and even in agricultural technologies. Familiar names such as Apple and Facebook aren t on this list because reputation doesnt matter. Were high-lighting where important innovations are happening right now.The 50 Smartest Companies2014These businesses are setting the pace of innovation. Theyre shaking up markets or creating new ones.1IlluminaSee story on p. 28.2Tesla MotorsSee story on p. 30.3GoogleSee story on p. 32.4SamsungMaximizing the advantages of its vertical integration as it extends its lead in the smartphone market.32 percent: Samsungs share of global smartphones sold5Salesforce.comIts tools will be crucial in helping companies incorporate new data from the Internet of things.2,150: number of business apps in Salesforces online marketplaceMA14_50_illumina.indd 27 2/5/14 1:41 PM28MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM 50 SMARTEST COMPANIESalmost 25 years after the Human Genome Pr oj ec t launched, and a little over a decade after it reached its goal of read-ing all three billion base pairs in human DNA, genome sequencing for the masses is nally arriving. It will no longer be just a research tool; reading all of your DNA (rather than looking at just certain genes) will soon be cheap enough to be used reg-ularly for pinpointing medical problems and identifying treatments. This will be an enormous business, and one company dominates it: Illumina. The San Diegobased company sells everything from sequencing machines that identify each nucleotide in DNA to software and ser-vices that analyze the data. In the com-ing age of genomic medicine, Illumina is poised to be what Intel was to the PC erathe dominant supplier of the funda-mental technology. Illumina already held 70 percent of the market for genome-sequencing machines when it made a landmark announcement in January: using 10 of its latest machines in parallel makes it feasi-ble to read a persons genome for $1,000, long considered a crucial threshold for moving sequencing into clinical applica-tions. Medical research stands to benet as well. More researchers will have the ability to do large-scale studies that could lead to more precise understanding of diseases and help usher in truly person-alized medicine.Illumina was relentless in getting to this point. When CEO Jay Flatley joined the company in 1999, it was a 25- person startup that sold microarray chips, which were useful in examining specic spots on the genome for important variations. But while the market grew relatively fast, competition was tough. In 2003, for example, Illumina had $28 million in revenue and a net loss of $27 million. Making matters tougher, the potential for microarrays seemed limited once more comprehensive sequencing technology began to improve quickly. In 2006, when a company called 454 Life Sciences was months away from the rst rapid readout CHART

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INSTITUTE98 99 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 001998Illumina is founded to build on gene analysis technology from Tufts University1999Hires Jay Flatley as CEO2000Has an initial public ofering2001Begins selling genotyping services to researchers2006Acquires Solexa, maker of machines that sequence genomes2009Announces a service that will sequence an individuals genome for $48,0002013Acquires Verinata Health, which sells prenatal sequencing tests to identify fetal abnormalities2014Begins selling machines that can sequence genomes for around $1,000 eachThe cost of sequencing has plunged because of technologies that read DNA optically and nish the job in hours rather than days.Genomic Economics $100 mil.COST PER GENOME$10 mil.$1 mil.$100,000$10,000$1,000$95.3 mil.$5,800After outanking and outlasting competitors, it is on top of the genome-sequencing businessjust as that market is about to soar in importance.IlluminaMA14_50_illumina.indd 28 2/5/14 1:41 PM29MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 50 SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM6DropboxIts business services are making cloud le storage more pervasive.200 million: number of users7BMWAt the forefront of adding self-driving capabilities to cars.2020: when BMW expects to begin selling cars that are autono-mous on highways8Third Rock VenturesSee story on p. 34.9SquareNot just giving merchants a way to collect payments on phones; now you can e-mail someone money.$20 billion: estimated annual value of transactions processed by Square10AmazonRaising expectations for what e-commerce can deliver.12: the number of top online retail-ers whose sales would have to be combined to match Amazonsof an individual human genome (that of DNA scientist James D. Watson), Flatley knew Illumina had to have a sequencing technology of its own, and he had a choice: build it or buy it. We had an internal development program, but we were also looking at anyone in the market that already had a sequencing technology, he says now. Ultimately he settled on buying a com-pany called Solexa. Solexa took advantage of a novel way of sequencing, known as sequenc-ing by synthesis, that was 100 times faster than other technologies and correspondingly cheaper, says Flatley. But it was a small business, with just $2.5 million in revenue in 2006. After Illumina provided the global distribu-tion Solexa needed, we built it into a $100 million business in one year, he says. It was an inection point for us. We began this super-rapid growth. The deal also turned out to be a turning point for Illuminas competi-tors, which quickly fell behind tech-nologically. Roche, which bought 454 Life Sciences in 2007, announced last October that it would shutter the company and phase out its sequenc-ers. Complete Genomics, another com-petitor, cut jobs and began looking for a buyer in 2012; last year the Chinese company BGI-Shenzhen bought it, although Illumina made a failed bid for it as well.The Solexa deal was far from the last time that Flatley transformed Illumina by buying the technology he thought it needed. Another pivotal point came last year, when the com-pany bought Verinata Health, maker of a noninvasive prenatal sequencing test to identify fetal abnormalities. That gave Illumina a service that consum-ers can buy (through their doctors), in a market that could be worth billions of dollars in revenue. Since 2005 Illumina has spent more than $1.2 billion on acquisitions. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the company as just a deep pocket. Illumina has a knack for improving the technology of companies it buys, says Doug Schenkel, managing director for medical technology equity research at Cowen and Company. When Illumina bought Solexas sequencing technol-ogy, Schenkel says, it was considered inexible and was thought likely to hit a ceilingafter which it could prob-ably not be improved furtherwithin three years. Illumina took that tech-nology and, with innovation and investment, has made it flexible enough to not only dominate existing markets but open up multiple new opportunities, he adds. Even todaysix years laterthe ceiling is still at least three years away.Illuminas soup-to-nuts strategyof providing fundamental sequencing technologies as well as services that mine genomic insightsappears to be a winner as genomic information begins to touch the practice of medi-cine and enter everyday life. Illumina already has an iPad app that lets you review your genome if it has been analyzed. One of the biggest chal-lenges now is increasing the clini-cal knowledge of what the genome means, Flatley says. Its one thing to say, Heres the genetic variation. Its another to say, Heres what the varia-tion means. Demand for that under-standing will only increase as millions of people get sequenced. We want to be at the apex of that efort, he says. Eilene ZimmermanThe cost of sequencing has fallen faster than the cost of computing.MA14_50_illumina.indd 29 2/5/14 4:07 PM30MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM 50 SMARTEST COMPANIESOther electric-car startupssuch as Fisker Automotivehave failed. And even established automakers have struggled to sell their battery-powered cars. What makes you diferent?Part of it is that Tesla designs its own batteries, motors, electronics, and software controls. Its not very glamorous, and not even always cus-tomer facing, but in the end thats what makes the car work and what makes it diferent from other electric cars, and makes it compete efectively against gasoline cars. An example?Our superchargers allow us to charge the Model S more than twice as fast as other cars. To do that kind of charging, everything has to be work-ing in perfect synchrony. The cooling system; the electronics that are talk-ing to the charger; the connection to the grid. That whole thing has to work as a system awlessly. If we out-sourced the charger, or outsourced those other pieces, we couldnt inno-vate as quickly. We couldnt roll out things anywhere near as fast. You made an early decision to switch from analog to digital con-trollers for the electric motor, which allows you to control the motor with software. How important was that decision? Even we didnt understand, in the early days, how much exibility and agility that would give us.There was a lot of hand- wringing, and it was a difcult decision to make the leap from the old pathway over to the new and really bet every-thing on it. But that decision set us up to put software in control of all of the key vehicle functions, and we are now unique in our ability to change those things remotely. Youre referring to wireless updates. Last year two Model Ss caught re after drivers ran over objects in the road. Tesla sent out a software patch that raised the height at which the cars travel on the highway. There have been no car res since.Im totally convinced that the entire industry will go in this [wireless]direction. Its only a matter of time.Tesla MotorsCar companies have struggled to sell electric cars. Tesla Motors is the exception. Last year, the rst full year of sales for its ModelS luxury sedan, Tesla sold more than twice as many cars as either Nissan or GM did when they introduced their battery-powered vehicles, the Leaf and the Volt. Tesla did this even though its a startup with no dealer network, selling a car thats more than twice as expensive as the electric cars from the major automakers. Its easy to be dazzled by the cars style or features like its 17-inch touch screen. But the innovation goes much deeper than that. MIT Technology Reviews senior editor for energy, Kevin Bullis, asked JB Straubel, Teslas cofounder and chief technical ofcer, to help identify the engineering advances behind Teslas success.QUICKHONEY11TencentBuilding on its Twitter-like social-media service in China with elec-tronic payment technologies.$130 billion: Tencents market capitalization12SnapchatMeeting the need for online inter-actions that are ephemeral.$3 billion: size of buyout ofer from Facebook, which Snapchat rejected13CreeSee story on p. 36.14BoxIts online le storage service is becoming the basis for a wide range of applications that help people get work done.1,000: number of third-party mobile apps that work with BoxMA14_50_tesla.indd 30 2/5/14 2:28 PM31MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 50 SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMWere on track to getting to costs that will allow us to make a $35,000 car with a greater-than-200-mile range. It doesnt require some mythical invention. All the pieces are fundamentally there. JB StraubelJB Straubel, 38CTO, Tesla MotorsPalo Alto, CaliforniaYou made an early decision to use small batteries, similar to the kind used in laptops, that cost less per kilowatt-hour of storage than the cells other automakers use. But whereas other automakers might have a few hundred battery cells in a pack, you have to use 10,000. Other car companies think that large-format cells must be the way to go. But theyre more expensive and have worse performance. People think of thousands of cells and say, I dont know how to do that, and I dont want to think about that. It is a challenging problem. Its harder to engineer a system to do it, but engi-neering is a one-time dif culty.We started with a commod-ity [laptop] cell because we had 50 people and we couldnt do anything else. But that plan has evolved. Were now to the point that were working extremely closely with the cell manu-facturers in designing customized cells with customized chemistry for cars. Youve used lower-cost cells, but because you chose to give your cars a 250-mile range, compared with less than 100 miles for most of your competitors cars, your cars are still expensivepeople are paying $70,000 to over $100,000 per car.People think the battery accounts for most of the cost of an elec-tric car, but thats not the case at all. For the Roadster [Teslas first car], the battery was already down below half the cost. Now were down to a quarter of the cost in most cases. Were on track to get-ting to costs that will allow us to make a $35,000 car [the cost of the GM Volt] with a greater-than-200-mile range. It doesnt require some mythical invention. All the pieces are fundamentally there.MA14_50_tesla.indd 31 2/5/14 2:28 PM32MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM 50 SMARTEST COMPANIESGoogle15BrightSource EnergyFired up the worlds largest solar thermal power plant, in California. 377 megawatts: the plants pro-duction when fully operational16Wal-Mart StoresTaking advantage of its retail heft as it rethinks payment and e- commerce technologies.1 billion: Walmart.com page views in rst ve days of holiday season17General ElectricIts use of big data and sensors could help revive manufacturing. $1.5 billion: announced invest-ment in the industrial Internet18QualcommMaking breakthroughs in neuro-morphic computing.30 percent: 2013 revenue growth19KaggleHas helped many organizations crowdsource data analysis; now focusing on certain industries.144,000: number of registrants for Kaggle data-analysis competitionswhen it comes to devel-oping software, few com-panies can match Googles prowess. It doesnt just have the most popular search engine. Chrome is the most widely used Internet browser. Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheets, Docs, and Presentations are legitimate alter-natives to Microsoft Office. Picasa, Googles free photo management soft-ware, might be as good as anything from Apple. Android dominates the phone and tablet landscape. Google Maps is becoming the best navigation program on any device. And yet by one important mea-sure, Google hasn t been innovative enough. The vast majority of its rev-enue comes from adsthe ones in search results and the ones that Google pushes out to thousands of websites. These were amazing innovations when Google developed them back in 2001 and 2002. But Googles many eforts to develop additional ways to make money havent gone very far. Perhaps Googles most public fail-ures have been in consumer electron-ics. Do you remember Google TV? The Nexus One? The Nexus Q? If you do, its probably not because you bought one. Google acquired Motorola Mobil-ity for $12.4 billion in 2012 in an efort to nally build products that consum-ers wanted to buy. But Motorolas market share fell on Googles watch; the deal soured so fast that Google is now selling off most of Motorola to Lenovo. In the end Google will have spent about $3 billion to get a chunk of Motorola patents. Googles problem is straightfor-ward: its culture is rooted in building software, giving it away, and improving it over timeall with little in the way of advertising or marketing. Selling stuf requires the oppositepersuading cus-tomers that the product for sale is n-ished and perfect in every way.So why cant Google just accept the markets judgment of its strengths and weaknesses and stop wasting share-holders money trying to expand the revenue base? Because even though there is every indication that Googles advertising business will keep grow-ing for years to come, nothing guar-antees that it will dominate forever. Something could come along and do to search ads what search ads did to TV and newspaper ads.That is why Google still hopes to compete with the likes of Apple in con-sumer electronics. And its not too late, especially with Googles $3.2 billion purchase of Nest Labs in January.Of course, acquisitions are rarely magic bullets, as Google can attest. And look at the business Nest is in: it makes home thermostats and smoke alarms, which, to be kind, have been on the trailing edge of innovation. But thats what makes this purchase interesting. Nest has transformed these moribund categories with clever products that learn their users preferences and feel like things you would buy in an Apple store, which in fact is one of the places they are sold. Even though Nests ther-mostat costs $250, market analysts esti-mate that consumers have been buying more than 50,000 units a month.The company has struggled to move beyond advertising. Has it nally found the missing piece?CHART

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STOCK.MA14_50_google.indd 32 2/5/14 1:02 PM33MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 50 SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMWhat really made the Nest deal attractive, however, was the people. Nests CEO and cofounder is Tony Fadell, the former Apple executive who was critical in that companys rebirth. He helped build and design the iPod, and then he helped conceive and build the iPhone. Fadell and cofounder Matt Rogers, who was also one of the early iPhone engineers, have hired roughly 100 of Apples top engineers and mar-keters, according to public prole data on LinkedIn. They made Nest one of the largest repositories of ex-Appleites in Silicon Valley.Indeed, buying Nest could be Google cofounder Larry Pages most important deal since he became CEO in 2011. Motorola didnt bring much expertise in design or marketing, whereas Fadell spent a decade work-ing for Steve Jobs, giving him insights he used to turn Nest into an overnight success. Now he reports to Page, and Google might finally produce a new kind of innovation. Fred VogelsteinGoogle spends a lot on R&Dusually about 13 percent of its annual revenue.Ads accounted for 85 percent of revenue last year.2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012With Motorola aboard, ads fell to 87 percent of 2012 revenue.$6.5Until 2008, more than 99 percent of its revenue came from ads.$9.22013Non-advertisingAdvertising$50.2 billion$6.1 billion$59.8 billionGoogles quest for new or improved technologies has cost more than $50 billion of its cash over the last nine years.ANNUAL REVENUE(in billions)The Long SearchTOTAL(05-13)$0.1$1.1$1.9$1.4$0.1$0.4$3.3$33.3$10.6$0.9 $2.1$1.2$0.6$2.8$3.8$5.2$8.0$6.8$2.8Notable Acquisitions Beyond AdsMotorola MobilityMobile phones, 12Lost more than $1 billion as part of GoogleBuferBoxPackage-pickup kiosks, 12 Part of a push intoonline commerceMakani PowerAirborne wind turbines, 13Deal came amid other green-tech investmentsBoston DynamicsWalking robots, 13One of the eight robotics companies bought last yearNest LabsHome automation, 14Brings aboard formerApple engineersR&DAcquisitionsCASH USED FOR ...$19.8MA14_50_google.indd 33 2/5/14 1:02 PM34MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM 50 SMARTEST COMPANIESThird Rock VenturesILLUSTRATION

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YOUNGthe path to greatness in biotechnology runs through a vale of tears. Mark Levin wants to remember that.So once every few months the 40-person staf of Levins venture cap-ital rm, Third Rock Ventures, gath-ers silently to listen. Their speaker last September was Peter Frates, a 29-year-old former captain of the Boston Col-lege baseball team. In a voice slurred by spreading paralysis, Frates recalled how his doctors told him, You have amyo-trophic lateral sclerosis and then sent him home. There was nothing to do.Inventing a treatment for ALS is immensely challenging. Most drugs fail. Even so, Third Rock intends to try. Since 2006, Levin and cofound-ers Kevin Starr and Bob Tepper have backed 32 companies that have 25 products in human trials. Its newest venture, Voyager Therapeutics, is typi-cally ambitious: it will have $45 mil-lion to try to develop a gene therapy for nervous-system disorders such as ALS. Levin himself will be the CEO. The big difference is they go in on their own, and they go in big, says Amber Salzman, a biotech executive whose son was born with adrenoleu-kodystrophy. That heartbreaking inher-ited disease is now in the sights of Bluebird Bio, a gene therapy company that went public last Juneone of three IPOs for Third Rock startups last year. Levin grew up in St. Louis, son of a small-time entrepreneur who sold shoes. He bought a doughnut shop and worked in process engineering at Miller Brewing before making a name as a dealmaker in Californias early biotech scene. That was a crazy time, when anything was possible, he says. A similar spirit pervades Third Rocks warren of offices in a Boston brownstone. A gumball machine at the entrance declares it an entrepreneur-ial space. Slogans on the wall say Do the right thing and Make them raving fans. Levin, immensely rich from com-panies hes sold, comes to the ofce in outrageous jewelry and neon sneakers. Third Rock has a unique approach to sizing up emerging technologies. The rm cultivates a long to-do list of ideas, like one for personalized vaccines and one for a molecular stethoscope. It then spends three or four years study-ing the science and the markets, and seducing the worlds leading experts to sign on.Some people can spot what is going to be extraordinary in ve or 10 years, says Gregory Verdine, a chemistry pro-fessor who was lured out of a tenured position at Harvard to run another Third Rock company, Warp Drive Bio. And then there are those who can imagine it and actually build it.Verdine puts Levin in the category of great leaders, citing his ability to attract the best people to his causes. He is an extraordinarily empathetic person, Verdine says, who wants to leave his mark on biotech. Antonio RegaladoThese VCs dont wait for biotech startups to come to them. They create companies themselves.20Second SightMakes an articial retina for peo-ple with certain kinds of blindness.74: number of blind people who have gotten the Argus II implant21SpaceXWhere would NASA be without it?14: launches scheduled for this yearone more than it had from 2006 through 201322KickstarterKeeping crowdfunding pure, it wont let donors get equity in startups.$962 million: money pledged on the site for 55,000 projects23Hanergy Holding GroupChinese energy company is snap-ping up advanced solar technolo-gies at re-sale prices.$1.2 billion: onetime value of Miasole, a solar company that Hanergy bought for $30 millionMA14_50_third_rock.indd 34 2/5/14 4:27 PM35MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 50 SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMWere always listening to the experts, watching them, hearing them talk about the genetics, the biology, or whats happening in chemistry. You can just feel it if we are on the edge of something. Its a visceral experience. Mark LevinMark Levin, 63Partner, Third Rock VenturesBostonCapital raised by Third Rock$1.3 billionCompanies it has funded32Typical investment per company$30 millionTime it generally takes for compa-nies to bring a new drug to market1015 yearsPercentage of U.S. biotech compa-nies with one year of cash left33MA14_50_third_rock.indd 35 2/5/14 4:27 PM36MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM 50 SMARTEST COMPANIESOpportunity: Driven in part by new government regulations on energy efciency, LED lighting is increasingly replacing both incandescent and uorescent lighting in everything from desk lamps to streetlights. LED lighting, which uses semiconductors to produce the illumination, ofers various benets: its more energy efcient, a bulb lasts many years, and its dim-mable. Whats more, thanks to advances in the technology over the last decade, LEDs produce light of reasonably good quality. But many consumers and busi-nesses have been reluctant to switch over to the new technology. Thats partly because initial products were ungainly and because LED lights are more expen-sive than incandescent bulbs, a technology that dates back to Thomas Edison.CreeBy making a cheaper LED lightbulb, the newcomer to the industry hopes to dominate the market for energy-efcient lighting alternatives.24SiemensIts advances are bringing down the cost of ofshore wind power. 13,100: number of its wind turbines installed worldwide251366 TechnologiesSee story on p. 38.26UberDisrupting the taxi business.69: number of cities worldwide in which people can use Ubers app to summon rides27EvernoteIts tools for managing information overload get ever more useful. $45: cost of an annual subscrip-tion to Evernote Premium28BaiduChinese Web-search leader is expanding globally, heightening competition with Google.8 miles: distance from Baidus new Silicon Valley research lab to Google headquartersInnovation: Cree started out as a sup-plier of components to other LED makers. Two years ago, however, unsatised with the quality of LED-based bulbs made by those estab-lished manufacturers, engineers at Cree resolved to design and make their own. Last year, Cree released a consumer product with the famil-iar shape and light quality of an old-style lament bulb, priced at under $14 for the equivalent of a 60-watt bulb; LED bulbs had been selling for more than twice that just a few years earlier. The company has begun sell-ing its bulbs at Home Depot. Crees LED bulb competes directly with ones from lighting giants such as General Electric, Philips, and Osram Sylvania. But Cree now sells about $500 million worth of LED lighting annually and has nearly 10 percent of the market in North America, according to the Carnotensis Consultancy.Inside each bulb is the source of Crees technology advantage: a series of LEDs, each about half the size of a typical pencil eraser. Cree makes them on silicon car-bide wafers, allowing the company to produce more light from an LED chip than competitors that use sap-phire substrates. But price, ulti-mately, is what drives consumers. And Cree predicts it will be able to match traditional lighting on price in the not-very-distant future. Martin LaMonicaMA14_50_cree.indd 36 2/5/14 3:15 PM37MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 50 SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMFREDRIK

BRODENMA14_50_cree 37 2/5/14 9:43 AM38MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM 50 SMARTEST COMPANIESthe first thing to know about 1366 Technologies is that it has survived. Over the last three years, a long list of solar-power manufacturers have gone out of business, including BP Solar and startups Abound Solar and Solyndra. Not only has 1366 managed to remain aoat through this period, but it has prospered, in a deliberate and method-ical way. Last year the company opened a demonstration-scale factory to produce silicon wafers, a critical component in the most common type of solar cells. If all goes well, early next year it will break ground on a much larger factory nanced in part by a federal loan guar-antee it secured in June 2011, a few months before Solyndra infamously went bankrupt. CEO Frank van Mierlo is condent that the failures of solar manufacturing are yesterdays story. He beams with pride as he shows a visitor around the companys factory in suburban Boston. Although its modest compared with a commercial plant, the many pieces of equipment underscore the investment required to make solar cells. One room, though, is strictly of-limits to outsiders. In it are two custom- built furnaces that produce thin six-inch-square wafers directly from molten silicon. The final wafers are identical to those made in todays con-ventional solar factories, where they are cut from ingots. But 1366s machines simplify the traditional manufacturing process into one step, slashing costs by more than half. Thats important, since silicon wafers account for about 40 per-cent of the cost of todays solar panels, and manufacturers are hungry for even tiny cost reductions. The heart of the technology is a dishwasher-size machine that freezes the molten silicon into wafers. Chief technology officer Emanuel Sachs, a former professor at MIT, demonstrated the concept with a bath of liquid tin. He then adapted the technology to small silicon wafers, and nally to wafers of industry-standard size. The compa-nys machine now turns out more than 1,000 wafers a day.Sachs also invented the technol-ogy behind Evergreen Solar, which went bankrupt in August 2011. Unlike Evergreen, though, 1366 chose to sup-ply components for solar panels to other manufacturers, rather than try-ing to sell completed panels itself. This reduced the business risk of getting a new technology accepted and made it less expensive to scale up the manufac-turing process.By the end of next year, 1366 intends to have 50 machines at its planned $100 million factory, pro-ducing enough wafers for 250 mega-watts of solar power. By then, analysts estimate, the market for solar will be gigawatts bigger than it is today. And the prospects for solar power could be brightening. Martin LaMonica1366 TechnologiesThe company has managed the nearly impossible for a solar startup over the last few years: it is still in business.29GithubThis site for sharing computer code is part productivity tool, part social network.10.7 million: number of reposito-ries of shared software on the site30XiaomiSee story on p. 40.31Oculus VRIts soon-to-be released virtual-reality headset should help the technology live up to its potential.21: age of founder Palmer Luckey32Qihoo 360 TechnologyLeading Chinese antivirus com-pany, moving into Web search.$12 billion: Qihoos market capitalization33MonsantoContinues to dominate develop-ment and sales of genetically modied crops.$1.53 billion: R&D spending in 2013MA14_50_1366 38 2/5/14 9:43 AM39MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 50 SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMFREDRIK

BRODENMA14_50_1366 39 2/5/14 9:43 AM40MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM 50 SMARTEST COMPANIESsteve jobs jolted the mobile-phone business by introduc-ing a device that everyone had to copy. Now his unabashed admirer Jun Lei is shaking up the enormous Chinese mar-ket with smartphones that cost much less than comparable devices. Lei is founder and CEO of Xiaomi, which is just four years old but already one of the top six smartphone vendors in China. It entered the busi-ness in 2010 by releasing a cus-tom Android operating system, known as MIUI (pronounced me UI), whose interface looked a lot like the iPhones. It was hugely popular among enthusiasts who love to modify a phones functions. A year later, Xiaomi began selling a series of phones that had high-end specs but sold for roughly half of what rival devices were going for in China. One reason the prices are so low is that Xiaomi (pronounced zho-me) sells at or near cost and makes its money when cus-tomers pay for its cloud-based services, such as messaging and data backup. The company is also skillful at timing its sales. It presells a very limited num-ber of devices, which invariably sell out, attracting more inter-est. By the time the later buyers get their devices, manufacturing costs have declined signicantly for Xiaomi. Lei has cultivated a Jobs-like image, all the way down to his personal wardrobe and prod-uct announcements. His fans call him Leibs (a combina-tion of Lei and Jobs), though his detractors also use the term in mockery. Regardless, his com-pany is getting itself in position to sell a big chunk of the bil-lion Android phones expected to ood the developing world in the next few years as prices keep falling. Xinyu GuanXiaomiThis Chinese startup could outmaneuver big companies in the coming smartphone boom in developing countries.34Aquion EnergyJust nished a production line to make its low-cost battery for stor-ing electricity of the grid.$100 million+: capital raised35IBMIts Watson system could deliver more answers from big data. $1 billion: new investment IBM plans for Watson-related services36JawboneMaking tness tracking technol-ogy mainstream.28: countries where the Up tness band is sold37MedtronicContinues to shrink life-saving implantable medical devices.2 grams: weight of the worlds smallest pacemakerILLUSTRATION

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XIAOMIMA14_50_xiaomi.indd 40 2/4/14 2:30 PM41MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 50 SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMEven a pig can y if it sits in the right spot during a whirlwind. Jun LeiJun Lei, 44Chairman and CEO, XiaomiBeijing, ChinaIncrease in smartphones sold in China in the third quarter of 2013, making it both the worlds biggest and fastest-growing market64%Growth in Xiaomis smartphone sales in 2013160%Year of Xiaomis founding2010Xiaomis 2013 revenue$5.2 billionValuation in Xiaomis last round of funding$10 billionMA14_50_xiaomi.indd 41 2/4/14 12:38 PM42MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM 50 SMARTEST COMPANIESOpportunity: Making gasoline from natural gas rather than oil could cut its cost in half. Such a technology could also help make plastics far cheaper. While oil costs around $100 a barrel, natural gas sells in the U.S. for the equivalent of about $20 a barrel and is likely to remain much cheaper than oil for some time: it is estimated to be between two and six times more abundant than oil, and technologies like hydrofracking have led to a surge of production from unconventional sources like the Marcellus Shale in the east-ern United States. Equally important, natural gas is more evenly distributed around the world than petroleum. The United States has ample supplies thanks to shale deposits, but so do China, many parts of Europe and South America, Australia, and South Africa. Making gasoline and commodity chemicals from natural gas rather than petroleum could help free the rest of the world from the political and economic stranglehold of the large oil-exporting nations. Siluria TechnologiesIf it can convert natural gas to transportation fuels and commodity chemicals, it could reduce our dependence on oil. CHART

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INDEX38ValveA rising force in video games with its open-source console and online game distribution.65 million: number of people using Valves game-distribution network39Genomics EnglandWill run the U.K.s project to make DNA sequencing part of the coun-trys health-care system. 100,000: number of genomes the company hopes to sequence in ve years40D-Wave SystemsIts not clear whether it has invented quantum computers. But its machines solve certain problems remarkably well.30 minutes: time it took in one study for a conventional com-puter to solve a problem that D-Waves machine handled in less than half a second41Siluria TechnologiesSee the story at right.Innovation: The goal of Siluria, a Silicon Valley startup fueled with $63.5 mil-lion in venture funding, is both auda-cious and simple: create a process that efciently uses natural gas, rather than petroleum, to make ethylene and gaso-line. The challenge is the chemistry. Its possible to use catalysts to make these products out of methane (the main ingredient in natural gas), but an efcient industrial process has eluded chemical engineers for decades. Siluria thinks it can succeed where others have failed, not because it understands the chemistry bet-ter but because it has ways to rapidly make and screen potential catalysts. The company built an automated sys-tem that can quickly synthesize hun-dreds of diferent catalysts at a time and then test how well they convert methane into ethylene. It works by varying both what catalysts are made of and their micro-scopic structure. Making a catalyst in, say, the shape of a nanowire changes the way it interacts with methane, and this can transform a useless combina-tion of elements into an efective one. Siluria says the catalysts produced at its pilot plant in Menlo Park, Cali-fornia, have performed well enough to justify building two larger demonstra-tion plantsone across San Francisco Bay in Hayward that will make gaso-line, and one in Houston that will make ethylene. The company hopes to prove that the technology will work at a com-mercial scale and can be plugged into existing reneries and chemical plants.Siluria cant tell you exactly how its solved the problem that stymied chemists for decadesif indeed it has. Because of the nature of its throw-everything-at-the-wall approach, it doesnt know precisely how its new catalysts work. All it knows is that the process appears to. Kevin BullisMA14_50_siluria.indd 42 2/5/14 2:29 PM43MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 50 SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMSiluria wants to take advantage of the large increase in supplies of natural gas. 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011204,000334,000The abundance of natural gas means it could be attractive to make fuels and chemicals out of methane rather than petroleum.U.S. NATURAL GAS RESERVES(in billions of cubic feet)Making Oil ObsoleteU.S. NATURAL GAS PRICE VERSUS OIL(dollars per million BTUs; dollars per barrel)2.2CHEMICAL REACTION OF METHANE TO ETHYLENE U.S. SHALE GAS PRODUCTION(billions of cubic feet per day)December2013January2002 $150 billion32.7C2H42H2O + 2CH4+ O2WORLD ETHYLENE MARKET2 Methane Ethylene 2 Water Oxygen2005 2009 2013 2005 2009 2013$3.73$97.91$10864$100806040Natural gas$8.69Oil$56.64Price for BTUs equivalent to a barrel of oil$21.63MA14_50_siluria.indd 43 2/5/14 2:29 PM44MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM 50 SMARTEST COMPANIESWere you surprised at how quickly Upworthy got this big?Pariser: We were blown away. We honestly never would have dreamed that the site would be as big as it is. Koechley: A lot of people thought it was unlikely that there were 50 or 60 or 70 million people out there who wanted to watch videos about mean-ingful social issues.Describe Upworthys system for mak-ing things go viral. Pariser: There are hundreds of mil-lions, if not billions, of videos posted every month, and our curators are looking for the several hundred that are very meaningful about some important topic and very, very com-pelling. We have various tools that our curators use, but ultimately it comes down to human judgment and their ability to nd videos or charts or graphics that just blow them away. Then they write headlines that have become an Upworthy signature. Your headlines are lled with superlativesthe biggest, the worst, the most horrifyingand tell readers that clicking the link will change their lives. Pariser: Generally [the curators] write 25 or so headlines and then pick four to try out. And then sometimes they ll take a couple rounds of that. We think of it kind of like a comedian playing Duluth before you go to New York, working out the material and what people are laughing at. Koechley: Headlines are a way to get somebody to watch a seven-minute video about depression or a 12 -minute video about climate change. If you said This is a 12-minute video about climate change, you just know that people wont click through. But if you actually bring out the stuf that speaks to their curiosity and their interest, you can connect people with ideas that they really love and enjoy. Youll have to vary the tone if you want to keep standing out, though. Upworthy- style headlines are every-where on the Web now.Koechley: Totally. The number of new directions and formats and ideas that were testing every day are legion. UpworthyUpworthy is one of the fastest-growing websites ever, despite producing only minimal original material. Instead, Upworthy highlights videos that people have posted online about gay marriage, health care reform, racial prejudice, gender equality, and other subjects that interest the sites liberal curators. The foundersEli Pariser, who had led the left-wing political group MoveOn, and Peter Koechley, former managing editor of the satirical publication the Onionstarted the site to help progressive-friendly content spread virally online, even if that means copting some sensational tactics from sites that propagate videos of cute cats. They spoke to MIT Technology Reviews deputy editor, Brian Bergstein.42Kaiima Bio-AgritechDeveloping a novel non-GMO way to breed crops with improved yields.$65 million: investment raised in recent round 43DatawindBegan as a project to spread cheap tablets to students in India; now selling devices everywhere.$38: price of its cheapest tablet44Freescale SemiconductorMaking tiny computers for the Internet of things.2 square millimeters: size of a Freescale chip that has a proces-sor, memory, and other functions45UpworthySee the story at right.46LGKorean electronics giants recent innovations include a smartphone with a exible, curved screen.30 percent: growth in LGs mobile phone business in 2013 QUICKHONEYMA14_50_upworthy.indd 44 2/4/14 2:28 PM

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VOL. | NO. SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMIf you said This is a 12-minute video about climate change, you just know that people wont click through. But if you actually bring out the stuf that speaks to their curiosity and their interest, you can connect people with ideas that they really love and enjoy. Peter KoechleyPeter Koechley, 33co-CEO, UpworthyNew YorkEli Pariser, 33co-CEO, UpworthyNew YorkThere have been hardly any ads on the site. How will you make money?Pariser: Weve mostly been focused on building our community so far. Were testing a number of revenue options now, and were liking the underwriting model, where a founda-tion or similar group funds our edito-rial work in a specic topic. Given that Eli wrote a book called The Filter Bubble, which decries how the Internet often limits people to infor-mation they agree with, its disappoint-ing that Upworthy repeatedly covers the same topics and doesnt seem to challenge liberal assumptions. You guys are playing it safe.Koechley: I think the rst problem we were trying to solve is: how can we go from people spending zero minutes a day thinking about important societal issues to spending 10 minutes, or 20 minutes, or ve minutes? That said, one of the things were planning for this year is were choosing topics that we havent gone all that deeply into. So we have a partnership with the Gates Foundation to go a lot deeper on global health and poverty.Weve now built a platform that is going to allow us to take on lot of really interesting [opportunities]. Challenging the audience to think in diferent ways or challenging their currently held beliefs is certainly one of those that we think is interesting.MA14_50_upworthy.indd 45 2/5/14 12:34 PM46MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM 50 SMARTEST COMPANIESits a moneymaking scheme a child might suggest: get rich by inventing a new form of money. All the same, Chris Larsen, CEO and founder of Ripple Labs, is getting other people to play along with him. And they arent just Silicon Val-ley investors. People are using Ripples digital cash to exchange traditional paper currencies.Ripples currency is modeled on the digital cash Bitcoin, which has boomed and sometimes busted in value over recent years (see chart on page 18), and both use similar cryptogra-phy to prevent fraud. But while Bit-coin is designed to be used like regular currency to buy things, Ripples cash, known as XRP, is intended to make many foreign exchange transfers faster and less expensive. Traditionally, a person who has Burmese kyats, for example, and needs to send money to someone in U.S. dol-lars has had to wait days for the trans-action to clear, incurring sizable fees in the process. Thats because inter-national money transfer systems rely on centralized, decades-old systems to verify that payments are valid. But banksor new, low-cost startup ser-vicescould use Ripples technology to sidestep those systems. They would convert the payers kyats into XRPs and then use the Ripple protocol to automatically find a partner willing to convert those XRPs into dollars, completing the deal almost instantly. A nancial company might choose to hold a stash of XRPs of its own to make such transfers easier.Larsen hopes this technology will stimulate international commerce and make it cheaper for expatriates to send money back to their families in poor countries. (The World Bank estimates that in 2012, almost 12 percent of the $60 billion in such remittances to Afri-can countries was swallowed by trans-action fees.) Indeed, Ripple reports that transfers from Europe to China already make up a signicant portion of the roughly $20 million processed using its technology every month. The algorithms underlying Ripples technology dictate that there will be no more than 100 billion XRPs to go around. Though the company is giving away many of them to get the system off the ground, it has allocated one-fourth of the hoard to itself and is rely-ing on the XRPs increasing value as its only source of income. Between the freebies and the ones Ripple has sold to companies and investors who believe the currency will gain value, there are 7.5 billion XRPs in circulation. Thats enough to make Ripple Labs cash ow positiveand to show that inventing and selling your own currency really can work. Tom SimoniteRipple LabsA startup invented its own digital currency for exchanging money across borders.47Expect LabsIts anticipatory software listens to your conversations so it can suggest relevant information.8: number of people who can par-ticipate in a conversation through the companys MindMeld app48AngelListInuential service acts as a matchmaker for early-stage investors and startups.$1 billion: amount startups have raised through the site49Arcadia BiosciencesTests crops designed to use less fertilizer and water or tolerate more salt.50 percent: amount of nitrogen fertilizer needed by Arcadias rice, compared with conventional strains 50Ripple LabsSee the story at right.MA14_50_ripple 46 2/5/14 9:44 AM47MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 50 SMARTEST COMPANIES TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMFREDRIK

BRODENMA14_50_ripple 47 2/5/14 9:44 AMTECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMAn Articial Hand with Real FeelingA new nerve interface gives a sense of touch to a prosthetic limb.MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 248Story: David TalbotPhotographs: Ryan DonnellMA14_bionics.indd 48 2/3/14 4:52 PMTECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 249Igor Spetic lost his hand in a workplace accident. Now hes one of the rst people ever to regain realistic nger sensa-tions thanks to nerve interfaces (facing page) implanted in the arm.MA14_bionics.indd 49 2/3/14 4:52 PM50TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2MA14_bionics.indd 50 2/3/14 4:52 PM51MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2igor spetics hand was in a st when it was severed by a forging hammer three years ago as he made an aluminum jet part at his job. For months afterward, he felt a phantom limb still clenched and throbbing with pain. Some days it felt just like it did when it got injured, he recalls. He soon got a prosthesis. But for amputees like Spetic, these are more tools than limbs. Because the prosthetics cant convey sensations, people wearing them cant feel when they have dropped or crushed something.Now Spetic, 48, is getting some of his sensation back through electrodes that have been wired to residual nerves in his arm. Spetic is one of two people in an early trial that takes him from his home in Madison, Ohio, to the Cleveland Veterans Afairs Medical Center. In a basement lab, his prosthetic hand is rigged with force sensors that are plugged into 20 wires protruding from his upper right arm. These lead to three surgically implanted interfaces, seven millimeters long, with as many as eight electrodes apiece encased in a polymer, that surround three major nerves in Spetics forearm.On a table, a nondescript white box of custom electronics does a crucial job: translating information from the sensors on Spetics prosthesis into a series of elec-trical pulses that the interfaces can trans-late into sensations. This technology is 20 years in the making, says the trials leader, Dustin Tyler, a professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve Uni-versity and an expert in neural interfaces.As of February, the implants had been in place and performing well in tests for more than a year and a half. Tylers group, drawing on years of neuroscience research on the signaling mechanisms that under-lie sensation, has developed a library of patterns of electrical pulses to send to the arm nerves, varied in strength and timing. Spetic says that these diferent stimulus patterns produce distinct and realistic Facing page: When the sensory inter-face is disconnected, Spetic has trouble picking up cherries. He crushes them 23 percent of the time when hes allowed to watch his eforts, and 57 percent of the time when he cant watch.Top: To evaluate his sensory feedback, he picks up blocks held to the table with magnets. Bot-tom: With sensa-tion restored, he can pick up cherries and remove stems 93 percent of the time without crushing, even blindfolded.MA14_bionics.indd 51 2/4/14 4:24 PM52TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2MA14_bionics.indd 52 2/3/14 4:52 PM53TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2feelings in 20 spots on his prosthetic hand and ngers. The sensations include press-ing on a ball bearing, pressing on the tip of a pen, brushing against a cotton ball, and touching sandpaper, he says. A surprising side efect: on the rst day of tests, Spetic says, his phantom st felt open, and after several months the phantom pain was 95 percent gone. On this day, Spetic faces a simple chal-lenge: seeing whether he can feel a foam block. He dons a blindfold and noise- canceling headphones (to make sure hes relying only on his sense of touch), and then a postdoc holds the block inside his wide-open prosthetic hand and taps him on the shoulder. Spetic closes his pros-thesisa task made possible by existing commercial interfaces to residual arm musclesand reports the moment he touches the block: success.While the results are promising, research that involves surgical implants is time-consuming. Completing the pilot study, refining stimulation methods, and launching full clinical trials is likely to take 10 years. Tyler is also finishing development of an implantable electronic device to deliver stimuli so this is not just on a bench in a lab, but gets into the home eventually, he says. And he is working with manufacturers of prostheses to inte-grate force sensors and force processing technology directly into future versions of the devices.When the tests are over and the equip-ment is disconnected, Spetics sensory vis-itation with his lost hand abruptly ends. He says hes blessed to know these people and be a part of this. But he cant help thinking wistfully about what the future might bring. It would be nice to know I can pick up an object without having to look at it, or I can hold my wifes hand and walk down the street, knowing I have a hold of her, he says, as he puts on his coat and starts back home. Maybe all of this will help the next person. Facing page: A stan-dard prosthetic hand is rigged with force sensors for lab trials. Top: Control boxes deliver signals to electrodes surround-ing nerves in Spetics arm, producing sen-sations of touch. Bottom: This device might eventually be implanted in his arm, replacing lab equipment to deliver signals. Force sen-sors and processing technology could be integrated into future prosthetic devices.MA14_bionics.indd 53 2/4/14 4:24 PM54TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2MA14_genome.indd 54 2/6/14 9:58 AM55TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2Genome SurgeryBy Susan YoungPrecise and easy ways to rewrite human genes could nally provide the tools that researchers need to understand and cure some of our most deadly genetic diseases. A sketch made by Francis Crick in 1953 shows his rst impression of the DNA molecule.over the last decade, as dna-sequencing technology has grown ever faster and cheaper, our understanding of the human genome has increased accordingly. Yet scientists have until recently remained largely ham-sted when they try to directly modify genes in a living cell. Take sickle-cell anemia, for example. A debilitating and often deadly disease, it is caused by a muta-tion in just one of a patients three billion DNA base pairs. Even though this genetic error is simple and well studied, medical researchers are helpless to correct it and halt its devastating efects. COURTESY

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LONDONMA14_genome.indd 55 2/6/14 9:58 AM56TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2Now there is hope in the form of new genome-engineering tools, particu-larly one called CRISPR. This technol-ogy could allow researchers to perform microsurgery on genes, precisely and eas-ily changing a DNA sequence at exact locations on a chromosome. Along with a technique called TALENs, invented sev-eral years ago, and a slightly older pre-decessor based on molecules called zinc finger nucleases, CRISPR could make gene therapies more broadly applicable, providing remedies for simple genetic disorders like sickle-cell anemia and eventually even leading to cures for more complex diseases involving multi-ple genes. Most conventional gene thera-pies crudely place new genetic material at a random location in the cell and can only add a gene. In contrast, CRISPR and the other new tools also give scientists a precise way to delete and edit specic bits of DNAeven by changing a single base pair. This means they can rewrite the human genome at will. It is likely to be at least several years before such eforts can be developed into human therapeutics, but a growing num-ber of academic researchers have seen some preliminary success with experi-ments involving sickle-cell anemia, HIV, and cystic fibrosis (see table on page 58). One is Gang Bao, a bioengineering researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who has already used CRISPR to correct the sickle-cell mutation in human cells grown in a dish. Bao and his team started the work in 2008 using zinc finger nucleases. When TALENs came out, his group switched quickly, says Bao, and then it began using CRISPR when that tool became available. While he has ambitions to eventually work on a vari-ety of diseases, Bao says it makes sense to start with sickle-cell anemia. If we pick a disease to treat using genome edit-ing, we should start with something rela-tively simple, he says. A disease caused by a single mutation, in a single gene, that involves only a single cell type. Bao has an idea of how such a treat-ment would work. Currently, physicians are able to cure a small percentage of sickle-cell patients by nding a human donor whose bone marrow is an immu-nological match; surgeons can then replace some of the patients bone mar-row stem cells with donated ones. But such donors must be precisely matched with the patient, and even then, immune rejectiona potentially deadly problemis a serious risk. Baos cure would avoid all this. After harvesting blood cell pre-cursors called hematopoietic stem cells from the bone marrow of a sickle-cell patient, scientists would use CRISPR to correct the defective gene. Then the gene- corrected stem cells would be returned to the patient, producing healthy red blood cells to replace the sickle cells. Even if we can replace 50 percent, a patient will feel much better, says Bao. If we replace 70 percent, the patient will be cured. Though genome editing with CRISPR is just a little over a year old, it is already reinventing genetic research. In particu-lar, it gives scientists the ability to quickly and simultaneously make multiple genetic changes to a cell. Many human illnesses, including heart disease, diabetes, and assorted neurological conditions, are afected by numerous variants in both dis-ease genes and normal genes. Teasing out this complexity with animal models has been a slow and tedious process. For many questions in biology, we want to know how diferent genes interact, and for this we need to introduce mutations into multiple genes, says Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge Massachusetts. But, says Jaenisch, using conventional tools to create a mouse with a single mutation can take up to a year. If a scientist wants an animal with mul-tiple mutations, the genetic changes must be made sequentially, and the timeline for one experiment can extend into years. In contrast, Jaenisch and his colleagues, including MIT researcher Feng Zhang (a 2013 member of our list of 35 innova-tors under 35), reported last spring that CRISPR had allowed them to create a strain of mice with multiple mutations in three weeks.Because a CRISPR system can easily be designed to target any specic gene, the technology is allowing researchers to do experiments that probe a large number of them. In December, teams led by Zhang and MIT researcher Eric Lander created libraries of CRISPRs, each of which tar-gets a diferent human gene. These vast collections, which account for nearly all the human genes, have been made avail-able to other researchers. The libraries promise to speed genome-wide studies on the genetics of cancer and many other human diseases. In little more than a year, CRISPR has begun reinventing genetic research. MA14_genome.indd 56 2/6/14 9:58 AM57TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2Genome GPSThe biotechnology industry was born in 1973, when Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen inserted foreign DNA that they had manipulated in the lab into bacteria. Within a few years, Boyer had cofounded Genentech, and the company had begun using E. coli modied with a human gene to manufacture insulin for diabetics. In 1974, Jaenisch, then at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, cre-ated the rst transgenic mouse by using viruses to spike the animals genome with a bit of DNA from another species. In these and other early examples of genetic engineering, however, researchers were limited to techniques that inserted the for-eign DNA into the cell at random. All they could do was hope for the best. It took more than two decades before molecular biologists became adept at ef-ciently changing specic genes in animal genomes. Dana Carroll of the University of Utah recognized that zinc nger nucle-ases, engineered proteins reported by col-leagues at Johns Hopkins University in 1996, could be used as a programmable gene- targeting tool. One end of the protein can be designed to recognize a particular DNA sequence; the other end cuts DNA. When a cell then naturally repairs those cuts, it can patch its genome by copying from supplied foreign DNA. While the technology finally enabled scientists to confidently make changes where they want to on a chromosome, its difficult to use. Every modification requires the researcher to engineer a new protein tai-lored to the targeted sequencea difcult, time-consuming task that, because the proteins are nicky, doesnt always work. TALENs, another signicant advance in gene editing, came along in 2010. TALENs are also proteins that nd and cut a desired DNA sequencebut tailoring them to new gene targets is much easier. While they represented a great improve-ment over zinc ngers, however, TALENs are large proteins that are cumbersome to work with and deliver into cells.CRISPR changed everything. It replaces the DNA-targeting proteins with a short bit of RNA that homes in on desired genes. Unlike the complex pro-teins, RNAwhich has nearly the same simple structure as DNAcan be made routinely in the lab; a technician can quickly synthesize the roughly 20-letter-long sequences the method requires. The system makes it easy for medical research-ers to modify a genome by replacing, deleting, or adding DNA. CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeatsclusters of brief DNA sequences that read similarly forward and backward, which are found in many types of bacteria. Sci-entists rst observed the puzzling DNA segments in the 1980s but didnt under-stand for almost two decades that they are part of a bacterial defense system. When a virus attacks, bacteria can incor-porate sequences of viral DNA into their own genetic material, sandwiching them between the repetitive segments. The next time the bacteria encounter that virus, they use the DNA in these clusters to make RNAs that recognize the matching viral sequences. A protein attached to one of these RNAs then cuts up the viral DNA. 1Zinc nger nucleases 2TALENs3CRISPRWhat is it? A protein consisting of a DNA -cutting enzyme and a DNA-grabbing region that can be tailored to recognize diferent genes. Also a protein containing a DNA-cutting enzyme and a DNA-grabbing region that can be programmed to recognize diferent genes, but it is easier to design than zinc nger nucleases. A DNA-cutting protein guided by an RNA molecule that is able to nd the specic gene of interest. Pros and cons It was the rst programmable genome-editing tool, but it relies on proteins that can be difcult to engineer for new gene targets. Potentially dangerous of-target cuts are also possible. Though simpler and cheaper to design than zinc nger nucleases, TALEN proteins can still be difcult to produce and deliver. Of- target cuts are a problem. This technique is afordable and easy to use, and it works for high-throughput, multi-gene experiments. Like the other tools, it can make of-target cuts. Editing Options MA14_genome.indd 57 2/6/14 9:58 AM58TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2In 2012, Emmanuelle Charpentier, a medical microbiologist who studies pathogens at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, and Jennifer Doudna, a collaborator at the University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley, showed they could use a single RNA in conjunction with the cut-ting protein, an enzyme called Cas9, to slice any desired sequence of DNA in test tubes. It was still uncertain whether the method would work in animal cells, but in January 2013 came a dramatic break-through. Zhang and George Church, a Harvard Medical School geneticist, sepa-rately reported that the CRISPR/Cas9 system could be used for gene editing in the cells of animals, including humans.Now a researcher who wants to go after a new gene need only synthesize the Cas9 protein and a bit of RNA that matches the sequences of the targeted region. The RNA then guides the enzyme to the DNA the researcher wants to cut. And because the same cutting protein is used regardless of the target, research-ers can design experiments in which they change multiple genes in an organism simultaneously using Cas9 and multiple RNA guides. It ofers the potential to do experiments that in the past were very difcult or essentially not possible, says Doudna.Complex MysteriesMITs Zhang, who is a member of the Broad Institute and the McGovern Brain Institute, is interested in the genetics behind mental illness. To try to under-stand these complex conditions, Zhang has helped develop multiple gene- and neuron-modifying tools, including TALENs and optogenetics, a technique that involves controlling neuron activ-ity with laser light. When he rst heard about CRISPR, in 2011, he began to engi-neer it for use in human cells. Now hes using CRISPR to help reveal the genetic secrets behind such devastating and poorly understood conditions as schizo-phrenia and autism. The tool allows Zhang to begin sys-tematically testing some of the DNA vari-ants that have been linked to the illnesses. While much progress has been made over the last decade toward identifying genes that are common in people with these conditions, understanding how these genes relate to the symptoms is a daunting challenge. What you learn from sequenc-ing is only an observation, says Zhang: in order to understand whether a suspected gene is actually causing the condition, you have to introduce the specic muta-tion into healthy cells or organisms and see what goes wrong. If the mutated cell or organism has features that mimic the human disease, thats evidence implicat-ing the gene.Zhang can re-create, in both lab mice and cultured human cells, genetic variants found in people with autism and schizo-phrenia. You can put a human muta-tion into the corresponding gene in a lab animal and then see: does that animal become less social or have a learning de-cit? he says. Then, he adds, you can study diferences in the behavior and physiology of lab-cultured neurons grown from stem cells that have been modified with the same mutation. With single-gene muta-Sickle-cell anemia HIV Cystic brosisStrategy Correct the sickle-cell mutation in stem cells taken from a patient and then inject the cells back into the patient; alternatively, reactivate a suppressed fetal hemoglobin gene in the same cell type. Prevent HIV from spreading to new immune cells in infected patients by altering genes the virus uses to enter cells in immune cell precur-sors; alternatively, destroy inactive HIV residing in the human genome by altering critical viral genes. Correct cystic brosis mutations in the genomes of airway cells and other afected cell types. Status Correction strategy works in human cells in a petri dish; zinc nger nucle-ases, TALENs, and CRISPR have all been used successfully. Reactivation strategy using zinc nger nucleases has been demonstrated in human cells and mice. Prevention strategy based on zinc nger nucleases is in human testing; TALEN and CRISPR versions have been shown in lab cells. The strategy to eliminate latent virus has also worked in cells, using zinc nger nucleases and CRISPR.Zinc nger nucleases and TALENs have been shown to correct the cystic brosis gene in cultured airway cells; CRISPR can correct the gene in cultured organlike clumps made from human intestinal stem cells. The Road to a CureMA14_genome.indd 58 2/6/14 9:58 AM59TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2tions, we will start to see aspects of the biological function that are involved in autism, he says. Zhang is also using CRISPR to make multiple genetic changes at once. That becomes particularly important with complex diseases like autism and schizo-phrenia, which for the most part are not caused by the type of single DNA change behind sickle-cell anemia. Different patients are afected by diferent collec-tions of mutations. Solving a puzzle of such immense complexity will require large, systematic studies on the effects of various genes and the way they inter-act. CRISPR makes such studies possi-ble, says Zhang, and will be important in nding treatments for a variety of com-plex diseases. We will understand more about pathways and disease mechanisms, he says. This knowledge will inform all kinds of drug development.Designer BabiesLate last year, Doudna, Zhang, Church, and two other pioneers of genome edit-ing founded a startup that will develop novel treatments for human genetic dis-eases. In November the company, Editas Medicine, announced that it had raised $43 million in venture capital and said it plans to use genome-editing technologies against a broad range of illnesses (one of Editas Medicines venture capital inves-tors, Third Rock Ventures, is proled on page 34). The launch of Editas should bene-t from a resurgence of interest in gene therapy thanks to years of technological improvements, including safer mecha-nisms for delivering treatment. The land-scape has changed for gene therapy, says Church. (There are still no gene therapies approved in the United States, though a number are in human trials.) But he says the therapies that Editas will develop will be fundamentally diferent from the older approaches that use a virus to insert a gene into cells. Making a change or a deletion is out of range for most of those simple viral methods, Church says. And deleting a bit of DNA, rather than adding a gene, may indeed be the key to treating many illnesses. Take Huntingtons disease. The fatal brain condition arises from a buildup of a toxic protein in neurons. Adding a healthy copy of the gene to the cell would not afect that proteins poisonous activity: the original dysfunctional version must be rewritten. With the new genome-editing tools, says Church, rewriting the defec-tive DNA may be possible: You arent limited to adding back something that is missing. And, he adds, when you start realizing that the most common versions of genes are not necessarily the ideal ver-sions, then you realize this is a much big-ger eld. Perhaps scientists could rewrite normal genes so that humans can better ght infectious diseases. They might even be able to shake up the molecular path-ways involved in aging. Church also predicts that if genome editing is used to cure childhood diseases, some scientists will be tempted to use it to engineer embryos during in vitro fertil-ization. Researchers have already shown that genome editing can rewrite DNA sequences in rat and mouse embryos, and in late January, researchers in China reported that they had created genetically modied monkeys using CRISPR. With such techniques, a persons genome might be edited before birthor, if changes were made to the eggs or sperm- producing cells of a prospective parent, even before conception. These possibilities raise ethical ques-tions. But if researchers prove they can safely correct diseases by editing the genome, its inevitable that some parents will also want to alter the genomes of healthy embryos. If you can prevent men-tal retardation with gene therapy, presum-ing that thats permissible, then theres a whole spectrum of intellectual challenges that will be discussed, says Church. Such discussions are likely to heat up as CRISPR becomes more widely used. For now, though, the technology is still evolving: while researchers like Bao, Church, and Zhang ultimately hope to cure some of our most intractable dis-eases, much of their time is still spent sim-ply ne-tuning the tool and exploring its possibilities. But even in these early days, CRISPR has already transformed how these researchers think about manipu-lating the genome. They are ham-sted no longer. Susan Young is MIT Technology Reviews biomedicine editor. Perhaps scientists could rewrite normal genes so that humans could better ght infections.MA14_genome.indd 59 2/6/14 9:58 AMInnovations and Ideas Fueling Our Connected WorldREGISTER BY APRIL 9 AND SAVE $600: technologyreview.com/DigitalSummitMIT Technology Review subscribers SAVE 10%.Use code TRSub at registration.The MIT Technology Review Digital Summit examines tomorrows digital technologies and explains their global impact on business and society. Youll get access to the innovative people and companies at the heart of the next wave of the digital revolution.Featured topics include:n The Internet of Things: Connected Cars, Homes, Commerce, Health, Citiesn The Disappearing Interfacen Digital PrivacyQuestions? Please e-mail: eventsreg@technologyreview.comJune 9-10, 2014 San Francisco, CA St. Regis HotelThad StarnerProfessor, School of Interactive ComputingGeorgia Institute of TechnologyAnthony GoldbloomFounder and CEOKaggleDi-Ann EisnorVP Platform & PartnershipWazePhil LibinCEOEvernoteRob ChandhokSenior Vice President, Qualcomm Technologies;President, Qualcomm Interactive PlatformsSpeakers include:Partner:summit.refresh.indd 1 2/4/14 4:05 PM61MIGUEL

MONTANERBig data, artificial intelligence, and analytics software are changing forever how businesses decide what to do.Data and Decision MakingBUSINESS REPORTCONTENTSThe Power to DecideSeeking Edge, Websites Turn to ExperimentsScientic Thinking in BusinessSoftware That Augments Human AbilitiesLinkedIn Ofers College Choices by the NumbersIBM Expands Plans for Watson AIStartups Embrace a Way to Fail FastRead the full report online at technologyreview.com/businessThe Big QuestionThe Power to DecideWhats the point of all that data, anyway? Its to make decisions.Back in 1956, an engineer and a math-ematician, William Fair and Earl Isaac, pooled $800 to start a company. Their idea: a score to handicap whether a bor-rower would repay a loan.It was all done with pen and paper. Income, gender, and occupation produced numbers that amounted to a prediction about a persons behavior. By the 1980s the three-digit scores were calculated on computers and instead took account of a persons actual credit history. Today, Fair Isaac Corp., or FICO, generates about 10 billion credit scores annually, calculating 50 times a year for many Americans.This machinery hums in the back-ground of our nancial lives, so its easy to forget that the choice of whether to lend used to be made by a bank manager who knew a man by his handshake. Fair and Isaac understood that all this could change, and that their company MA14_biz_print.indd 61 1/23/14 2:06 PM62TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 BUSINESS REPORT DATA AND DECISION MAKINGdidn t merely sell numbers. We sell a radically different way of making deci-sions that ies in the face of tradition, Fair once said.This anecdote suggests a way of understanding the era of big dataterabytes of information from sensors or social networks, new computer architec-tures, and clever software. But even super-charged data needs a job to do, and that job is always about a decision. In this business report, MIT Technol-ogy Review explores a big question: how are data and the analytical tools to manip-ulate it changing decision making today? On Nasdaq, trading bots exchange a bil-lion shares a day. Online, advertisers bid on hundreds of thousands of keywords a minute, in deals greased by heuristic solutions and optimization models rather than two-martini lunches. The number of variables and the speed and volume of transactions are just too much for human decision makers. When theres a person in the loop, technology takes a softer approach. Think of recommendation engines on the Web that suggest products to buy or friends to catch up with. This works because Inter-net companies maintain statistical mod-els of each of us, our likes and habits, and use them to decide what we see. In this report, we check in with LinkedIn, which maintains the worlds largest database of rsumsmore than 200 million of them. One of its newest oferings is Uni-versity Pages, which crunches rsum data to ofer students predictions about where theyll end up working depending on what college they go to. These smart systems, and their impact, are prosaic next to whats planned. Take IBM. The company is pouring $1 billion into its Watson computer system, the one that answered questions correctly on the game show Jeopardy! IBM now imagines computers that can carry on intelligent phone calls with customers, or provide expert recommendations after digesting doctors notes. IBM wants to provide cog-nitive servicescomputers that think, or seem to.Andrew Jennings, chief analytics of-cer for FICO, says automating human decisions is only half the story. Credit scores had another major impact. They gave lenders a new way to measure the state of their portfoliosand to adjust them by balancing riskier loan recipients with safer ones. Now, as other indus-tries get exposed to predictive data, their approach to business strategy is changing, too. In this report, we look at one tech-nique thats spreading on the Web, called A/B testing. Its a simple tacticput up two versions of a Web page and see which one performs better. Until recently, such optimization was practiced only by the largest Internet com-panies. Now, nearly any website can do it. Jennings calls this phenomenon system-atic experimentation and says it will be a feature of the smartest companies. They will have teams constantly probing the world, trying to learn its shifting rules and deciding on strategies to adapt. Win-ners and losers in analytic battles will not be determined simply by which organi-zation has access to more data or which organization has more money, Jennings has said. Of course, theres danger in letting the data decide too much. In this report, Duncan Watts, a Microsoft sociologist specializing in social networks, outlines an approach to decision making that avoids the dangers of gut instinct as well as the pitfalls of slavishly obeying data. In short, Watts argues, businesses need to adopt the scientic method.To do that, they have been hiring a highly trained breed of business skeptics called data scientists. These are the people who create the databases, build the mod-els, reveal the trends, and, increasingly, author the products. And their inuence is growing in business. This could be why data science has been called the sexiest job of the 21st century. Its not because mathematics or spreadsheets are particu-larly attractive. Its because making deci-sions is powerful. Antonio RegaladoEmerged TechnologiesSeeking Edge, Websites Turn to Experiments Optimization technology is reshaping publishers decision-making processand the Web itself. 1-800-Dentist is a small company fac-ing a big decision. What picture on its Web home page will get the most people to ll out a form with their names and phone numbers?At many Web publishers, such deci-sions can lead to impassioned arguments, fruitless debates, even hurt feelings. But 1-800-Dentist doesnt leave it to chance or opinion. Instead it runs an experiment. It launches two or more versions of a Web page, and then watches as users react. After thousands of people have visited, one version will have edged out the oth-ers with a statistically signicant improve-ment in the number of sign-ups. Such optimization testing is quickly spreading across the Web. And as com-panies gain access to tools that let them run their businesses like ongoing sci-ence experiments, its changing not only how decisions get made but what the Web looks like. There used to be a battle of opinions in our company, says Elliot Kharkats, the Web analytics and testing manager for 1-800-Dentist. The designer would get upset. The boss would intervene. But we dont have a story like that anymore. No one is really commit-ted to their version anymore, because testing proves over and over again that the smartest people in the room are just wrong. 10 billionCredit scores generated each year41Shades of blue Google reportedly testedMA14_biz_print.indd 62 1/23/14 2:06 PM63TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 BUSINESS REPORT DATA AND DECISION MAKINGa clear goal, says Rush, software is not going to help you.Some successful new Web publishers are born with optimization at the center of their decision making. One is Buzzfeed, an eight-year-old news site that is per-fecting ways to increase page views using A/B testing and other statistical tech-niques. Its trademark listicles (one typ-ical story: 10 Problems That Only Short Girls Understand) are viewed by 130 mil-lion people a month. Thats more than four times the number who read the New York Times. In fact, intensive testing appears to be reshaping what the Web looks like. But the page designs that are succeeding wont win any awards for art direction, just as listicles dont win Pulitzers. Even proponents of optimization technology admit it can produce sites with simple, cookie-cutter looks. But A/B testing is spreading because its become easy to do. Optimizely says it can pick a winning design after as few as 100 visits for sites that have never been optimized. In practice, running experiments is often much harder. At 1-800-Dentist, which is based in Los Angeles, Kharkats says hes testing text and images for several slightly diferent landing pages and estimates that he will need 150,000 visitors to each in order to detect a difference. That could take months, he says.By now, everyone at 1-800-Dentist is used to the idea that the results could be surprising. One picture that won out showed a short-haired male dentist rmly gripping the shoulder of a female patient. Thats not something most dentists would even do. Kharkats himself admits its a little weird. We did test diferent pictures. This guy beat the other versions. Dont ask me how, he says. Antonio RegaladoAt least 15 percent of the top 10,000 websites are conducting A/B tests at any given time, according to BuiltWith, an Australian company that scans sites to see what types of third-party software they are using. The not-for-prot Wikimedia Foundation, which publishes Wikipedia, tested various tweaks to its fund-raising messages throughout 2013, with results a spokesman calls amazing. The organi-zation says the more efective its appeals are, the fewer of them it has to show.But there are risks to following the data. It can turn into a tyranny of mob taste that diminishes the judgment of pro-fessionals or artists. In 2009, a top Google designer named Douglas Bowman quit, complaining that the company couldnt decide between two blues, so theyre test-ing 41 shades to see which one performs better. While Google says the designers story is not entirely accurate, the profes-sional anxieties are real.Now anyone with the data can make the call, says Rush. And that is very frightening for a lot of organizations. Traditional media companies, in par-ticular, aren t ready. Often, publishers dont have clear objectives, with editors, designers, and advertising salespeople each advocating diferent aims. Without The software 1-800-Dentist uses is called Optimizely. It allows publishers to easily carry out so-called A/B testsstatistical horse races between two or more versions of a website. Optimizely was founded four years ago by Dan Siro-ker and Pete Koomen, former product managers at Google, a company where A/B testing is used extensively to rate how search results are displayed. The startup thinks any website, large or small, can be optimized, and its ideas got a boost of publicity from Sirokers close involvement with President Obamas relection campaign, which broke records for online fund-raising. Kyle Rush, head of optimization for Optimizely, who ran testing for the Democrats in 2012, says the campaign used A/B testing to weigh every change to its fund-raising Web page, dis-covering big improvements along the way. At one point late in the race, they found that adding a personal message from the presidentStand with me, work with me led to an 11.3 percent increase in online donations to the campaign by visi-tors to the page. Yet testing also upset the campaign team. Time was tight, and Rush, just a midlevel employee, was running experi-ments that didnt always work out. We would do variations and it would drop the conversion rate by 30 percent for three hours, Rush says. That caused a panic. People said, Oh my God, we cant aford any more risks like that! The campaign environment is very risk averse. And thats the main thing that has to be untaught in most businesses.No one is really committed to their version anymore, because testing proves over and over again that the smartest people in the room are just wrong.128416%Seeking Perfection, More Websites Run ExperimentsPercentage of the top 10,000 websites that use A/B testing technology2010 2011 2012 2013 SOURCE:

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SOFTWAREMA14_biz_print.indd 63 1/23/14 3:31 PM64TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 BUSINESS REPORT DATA AND DECISION MAKINGto generate hypotheses in the rst place, to devise creative tests of the hypotheses that we have, and to interpret the data that we collect. Data and theory, in other words, are the yin and yang of the sci-entic methodtheory frames the right questions, while data answers the ques-tions that have been asked. Emphasizing either at the expense of the other can lead to serious mistakes. Also important is experimentation, which doesnt mean trying new things or being creative but quite specically the use of controlled experi-ments to tease out causal efects. In business, most of what we observe is cor-relationwe do X and Y happensbut often what we want to know is whether or not X caused Y. How many additional units of your new product did your advertising campaign cause consum-ers to buy? Will expanded health insurance coverage cause medical costs to increase or decline? Simply observing the outcome of a particular choice does not answer causal questions like these: we need to observe the diference between choices. Replicating the conditions of a con-trolled experiment is often difficult or impossible in business or policy settings, but increasingly it is being done in eld experiments, where treatments are ran-domly assigned to diferent individuals or communities. For example, MITs Pov-erty Action Lab has conducted over 400 field experiments to better understand aid delivery, while economists have used such experiments to measure the impact of online advertising. Although eld experiments are not an invention of the Internet erarandom-ized trials have been the gold standard of medical research for decadesdigital technology has made them far easier to implement. Thus, as companies like Face-book, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon increasingly reap performance benets from data science and experimentation, scientific decision making will become more pervasive. LeadersScientic Thinking in BusinessMore than technology, businesses need the scientic method. Throughout history, innovations in instrumentationthe microscope, the telescope, and the cyclotronhave repeat-edly revolutionized science by improving scientists ability to measure the natu-ral world. Now, with human behavior increasingly reliant on digital platforms like the Web and mobile apps, technology is efectively instrumenting the social world as well. The resulting deluge of data has revolutionary implications not only for social science but also for business decision making.As enthusiasm for big data grows, skeptics warn that overreliance on data has pitfalls. Data may be biased and is almost always incomplete. It can lead deci-sion makers to ignore information that is harder to obtain, or make them feel more certain than they should. The risk is that in managing what we have measured, we miss what really mattersas Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara did in relying too much on his infamous body count, and as bankers did prior to the 20072009 nancial crisis in relying too much on awed quantitative models.The skeptics are right that uncritical reliance on data alone can be problem-atic. But so is overreliance on intuition or ideology. For every Robert McNamara, there is a Ron Johnson, the CEO whose disastrous tenure as the head of JC Pen-ney was characterized by his dismissing data and evidence in favor of instincts. For every awed statistical model, there is a awed ideology whose inexibility leads to disastrous results. So if data is unreliable and so is intu-ition, what is a responsible decision maker supposed to do? While there is no correct answer to this questionthe world is too complicated for any one recipe to applyI believe that leaders across a wide range of contexts could benet from a scientic mind-set toward decision making.A scientific mind-set takes as its inspiration the scientic method, which at its core is a recipe for learning about the world in a systematic, replica-ble way: start with some general question based on your experience; form a hypothesis that would resolve the puzzle and that also generates a testable predic-tion; gather data to test your prediction; and nally, evaluate your hypothesis rela-tive to competing hypotheses. The scientific method is largely responsible for the astonishing increase in our understanding of the natural world over the past few centuries. Yet it has been slow to enter the worlds of politics, busi-ness, policy, and marketing, where our prodigious intuition for human behav-ior can always generate explanations for why people do what they do or how to make them do something different. Because these explanations are so plau-sible, our natural tendency is to want to act on them without further ado. But if we have learned one thing from science, it is that the most plausible explanation is not necessarily correct. Adopting a scientic approach to decision making requires us to test our hypotheses with data.While data is essential for scientic decision making, theory, intuition, and imagination remain important as wellMany of the most consequential decisions ofer only one opportunity to succeed.MIGUEL

MONTANERMA14_biz_print.indd 64 1/23/14 2:06 PM65TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 BUSINESS REPORT DATA AND DECISION MAKINGNevertheless, there are limits to how scientic decision makers can be. Unlike scientists, who have the luxury of with-holding judgment until sufficient evi-dence has accumulated, policy makers or business leaders generally have to act in a state of partial ignorance. Strategic calls have to be made, policies implemented, reward or blame assigned. No matter how rigorously one tries to base ones deci-sions on evidence, some guesswork will be required. Exacerbating this problem is that many of the most consequential decisions ofer only one opportunity to succeed. One cannot go to war with half of Iraq and not the other just to see which policy works out better. Likewise, one cannot reorga-nize the company in several diferent ways and then choose the best. The result is that we may never know which good plans failed and which bad plans worked. Even here, though, the scientific method is instructive, not for eliciting answers but rather for highlighting the limits of what can be known. We cant help asking why Apple became so suc-cessful, or what caused the last nancial crisis, or why Gangnam Style was the most viral video of all time. Nor can we stop ourselves from coming up with plau-sible answers. But in cases where we can-not test our hypothesis many times, the scientic method teaches us not to infer too much from any one outcome. Some-times the only true answer is that we just do not know.Some people find this conclusion depressing, but a scientic mind should always remain skeptical of what it knows. Be skeptical of data by all means, but also be skeptical of plausible explanations, conventional wisdom, inspiring ideolo-gies, compelling anecdotes, and most of all your own intuition. The result should be neither total paralysis nor a slavish adherence to data, nor should it in any way exclude creativity or imagination. Rather, it should lead us to a more ratio-nal, evidence-based world. Duncan Watts is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and author of Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us.Emerged TechnologiesSoftware That Augments Human AbilitiesHow chess and nancial fraud led Palantir to human-machine symbiosis.The IBM computer Deep Blues 1997 defeat of world champion Garry Kasparov is one of the most famous events in chess history. But Kasparov himself and some computer scientists believe a more signi-cant result occurred in 2005and that it should guide how we use technology to make decisions and get work done.In an unusual online tournament, two U.S. amateurs armed with three PCs snatched a $20,000 prize from a eld of supercomputers and grandmasters. The victors technology and chess skills were plainly inferior. But they had devised a way of working that created a greater combined intelligenceone in which humans provided insight and intuition, and computers brute-force predictions.Some companies are now designing software to foster just such man-machine combinations. One that owes its success to this approach is Palantir, a rapidly grow-ing software company in Palo Alto, Cali-fornia, known for its close connections to intelligence agencies. Shyam Sankar, director of forward deployed engineering at the company, says Palantirs founders became devotees while at PayPal, where they designed an automated system to ag fraudulent transactions. It catches 80 percent of the fraud, the dumb fraud, but its not clever enough for the most sophis-ticated criminals, says Sankar.PayPal ended up creating software to enable humans to hunt for that toughest 20 percent themselves, in the form of a suite of analysis tools that allowed them to act on their own insights about suspicious activity in vast piles of data rather than wait for automated systems to discover it. Palantir, which received funding from the CIA, now sells similar data-analysis software to law enforcement, banks, and other industries.Sankar describes Palantirs goal as fostering human-computer symbiosis, a term adapted from J.C.R. Licklider, a psychologist and computer scientist who published a prescient essay on the topic in 1960. Sankar contrasts that with what $450 millionPalantirs estimated annual revenuesMan over Machine, but for How Long?World population versus the number of PCs, smartphones, and tablets in use147258 BILLION361950 1960 1980 2000 1970 1990 2010HUMANSCOMPUTERSSOURCE:

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ALMANACMA14_biz_print.indd 65 1/23/14 2:06 PM66TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 BUSINESS REPORT DATA AND DECISION MAKINGhe calls the AI bias now dominant in the tech industry. We focus on helping humans investigate hypotheses, says Sankar. Thats only possible if analysts have tools that let them creatively exam-ine data from every angle in search of those aha moments. In practice, Palantirs software gives the user tools to explore interconnected data and tries to present the information visually, often as maps that track to how people think. One bank bought the soft-ware in order to detect rogue employees stealing or leaking sensitive information. The detective work was guided by when and where employees badged into build-ings, and by records of their digital activi-ties on the companys network. This is contrary to automated decision making, when an algorithm figures everything out based on past data, says Ari Gersher, a Palantir engineer. That works great. Except when the adversary is changing. And many classes of modern problems do have this adaptive adversary in the mix.Pal anti rs devoti on to human- computer symbiosis seems to be work-ing. The nine-year-old company now has 1,200 employees and is expanding into new industries such as health care. Forbes estimated that it was on course for rev-enues of $450 million in 2013. Zachary Lemnios, director of research strategy for IBM, is another Licklider fan. He says that Lickliders ideas helped shape IBMs efort in cognitive computing, a project that includes virtual assistant soft-ware and chips designed to operate like brains. You will have an entirely diferent relationship with these machines, says Lemnios. He says its the most important change to human- computer interaction since the graphical user interface was developed 25 years ago.Sankar also thinks that Palantirs suc-cess shows that large companies are ready to embrace human-computer symbio-sis now because of the way people have struck up symbiotic relationships with smartphones in their personal lives. The consumer experience has recalibrated enterprise at large; theyre on the hunt for something that replicates it, he says. Tom SimoniteCase StudiesLinkedIn Ofers College Choices by the NumbersTo read their futures, young people mine a database of 259 million rsums.LinkedIn is widely regarded as a social network for grownups, connecting 259 million people worldwide who put their rsums on display. It was never intended to create a teen haven. While parents may enjoy posting multidecade work histories, its harder to get high-school-age baby-sitters and burger flippers excited about documenting part-time jobs.Enter the data scientists. As early as 2011, LinkedIn began rethinking how it wanted to interact with the under-18 set. Teens might not have much to contribute to LinkedIns 20-petabyte trove of career information, but they could become some of its most avid data consumers. Speci-cally, LinkedIn could build a way for them to see where alumni of specic colleges end up workinggiving teens a kind of analytics dashboard to lay odds on their futures. Take well-known U.S. universities such as Carnegie Mellon and Purdue. In each case, LinkedIn has data on the career paths of more than 60,000 gradu-ates. Thats a data set big enough to allow for some fascinating ne-grained distinc-tions. Type in MIT, and you quickly learn that graduates are unusually likely to land jobs at Google, IBM, and Oracle. Plug in Purdue, and employers such as Lilly, Cummins, and Boeing predominate.Such information is a gold mine for high-school juniors and seniors, says Purvi Modi, a college advisor in Cupertino, Cali-fornia, since most high-school students have only a hazy idea of what careers are out there. By using LinkedIns tool, stu-dents interested in specialties such as solar energy, screenwriting, or making medical devices can pinpoint schools with the best track records of sending gradu-ates into those elds. Modi, who advises about 300 students a year, says about 40 percent of them now cruise through this part of LinkedIns database, known as University Pages, to get insights. Thats impressive, given that the data-combing service has been fully available only since August 2013.LinkedIn makes money from its huge enrollment in two ways. Recruiters pay as much as $8,500 a year for enhanced access to job candidates, while members can buy various premium services that make it easier to navigate the site. Inves-tors think LinkedIn could be creating a near-monopoly in the global market for talent. As of January, the company was valued at $24.5 billion (a remarkable 728 Hoping to Work at Google?Schools are ranked by the percentage of graduates employed at Google; based on four million rsums.MIT .85%CARNEGIE MELLON 1.21%UC BERKELEY .59%CALTECH 1.09%STANFORD 1.31%PRINCETON .55%BROWN .49%DARTMOUTH .45%IIT BOMBAY .49%IIT DELHI .44%SOURCE:

LINKEDINMA14_biz_print.indd 66 1/23/14 3:31 PM67TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 BUSINESS REPORT DATA AND DECISION MAKINGEmerged TechnologiesIBM Expands Plans for Watson AIIBM invests $1 billion in computer systems that provide cognitive services for businesses. IBMs computer system Watson van-quished human contestants on the TV quiz show Jeopardy! The question now: can it defeat the complexities of the real world?IBM is counting on it. The company said in January that it plans to greatly expand its eforts to commercialize Watson by putting another 1,500 engineers and marketers to work on the project (out of 434,000 employees), combining it with other cognitive computing technologies and investing a further $1 billion.To IBM, cognitive computing means systems that understand natural (human) language and can draw reasoned conclu-sions by mining the so-called unstruc-tured data, like text and audio, that accounts for 80 percent of all data busi-nesses confront. In effect, Watson is IBMs rst organized foray into commer-cial articial intelligence.A problem facing IBM is that despite big claims, Watson has not always fared as well in real-world circumstances as it did on Jeopardy!, where its ability to mine written information and process natural languageor ordinary speechallowed it to answer trivia questions.In fact, IBM has generated less than $100 million from selling systems based on Watson, far short of its long-term goal of a $10-billion-a-year business. Some critics say the technology, developed at IBM Research, was commercialized too soon. But Rob High, chief technology of-cer of Watson Group, as the expanded business unit is now known, says IBM made the right call. You have to put this stuf into action and rene it. You need times annual earnings), reecting a belief that the social network has just begun to tap the value of its enormous databases. That high valuation also puts pressure on LinkedIns team of 68 data scientists to build new tools to extract value from all those petabytes. One set of algorithms now coaches recruiters on People You May Want to Hire. Other tools alert rest-less workers to Jobs You Might Like. The University Pages initiative ts into this pattern; its a low-key version of Colleges You Might Want to Attend. Creating the right tool for college hunters turned out to be surprisingly tricky, says LinkedIns lead data scientist on the project, Gloria Lau. There wasnt any good way to ofer instant lists of good college choices, because teens (along with their parents) generally lack clarity about their priorities at rst.Young people need time to explore on their own, Lau found. By playing with var-ious lters, students who start with broad interests in an area such as engineering can discover subdisciplines and employers that they mightnt have known about at rst. One teen might end up being inter-ested in mechanical engineering careers at Tesla or Lockheed Martin, while another might learn that the local college is likely to lead to jobs in petroleum engineering at Halliburton. This slice-your-own-data approach is slower and more unpredictable than instant recommendations, like those LinkedIn gives to job seekers. From LinkedIns perspective, thats not all bad. College hunters tend to linger on the site, so they may see more ads or be drawn into greater use of LinkedIn. By letting users shape their own requests, LinkedIn also avoids playing favorites or issuing unat-tering reports about specic schools. So far, LinkedIn isnt charging either student users or campuses for any of Uni-versity Pages features. But even a free service can help business objectives. The obvious payof, says data chief Jim Baer, can be seen in new-member data. LinkedIns membership is growing by 38 percent a year, with the fastest expan-sion in the student and recent-graduate segment. George Andersexamples to work on, he says. You do hit speed bumps, but I dont think it was premature, it was exactly right. Under the reorganization, the number of employees working on Watson tech-nologies will increase fourfold, to 2,000. In a sign of its growing importance, the unit will now report directly to IBMs CEO, Virginia Rometty. IBM also plans to combine Watson with other cognitive technologies, including voice and image recognition. It will be a Watson system that can hear, see, and talk, says High.IBMs commercial goal, says Steve Gold, a senior marketer, is for Watsons style of articial intelligence to become the engine for cognitive services that IBM can sell to businesses. That could include computers able to carry on simple conversations for a call center, he says. Among IBMs biggest plans for Watson has been to create a system that can read medical records and recom-mend treatments for cancer patients. Yet so far, the system does not do that very well. Where Watson has struggled is with its vaunted ability to make sense of language on its own. In data presented last year by researchers at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, which is working with IBM to develop the cancer assistant, Watson correctly identied all the key data in patients records less than half the time. Thats not good enough to inform direct medical decisions. Cancer turns out to be a hard prob-lem, since unlike crisp game-show ques-tions, doctors case notes are a maze of jargon and inconsistently used terminol-ogy. While Watson is able to recommend the same course of treatment thats sug-gested by written medical guidelines, it does so consistently only when fed clearly structured data on a patients casesome-thing that less sophisticated software can do as well. Watson can easily duplicate a guideline recommendation. But we are 2,000IBM employees working on WatsonMA14_biz_print.indd 67 1/23/14 2:06 PM68TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2 BUSINESS REPORT DATA AND DECISION MAKINGCase StudiesStartups Embrace a Way to Fail FastHow Eric Riess lean startup method took over Silicon Valley. Automated systems routinely make decisions required to trade securities, detect fraud, finger terrorists, and place ads on Web pages. But when it comes to developing these kinds of technology, the hottest decision-making system isnt tech-nological at all. Its a product development philosophy known as the lean startup.Formulated by a software engineer named Eric Ries, the lean startup method (or methodology, as its practitioners like to say) is a set of strategies designed to dispel the cloud of uncertainty around innovation. Ries realized that startups needed help in 2001, when he worked for a company that spent $50 million creat-ing an online 3-D world only to learn that An experiment can be as simple as interviewing a handful of potential cus-tomers loitering at the local shopping mall, or offering a minimum viable product with a tightly constrained fea-ture setsometimes the mere promise of capabilities that havent even been built. While the approach can apply to any new business, the malleability of software lends itself particularly well to fast proto-types and turn-on-a-dime evolution. For instance, entrepreneur Paul Howe sub-jected his big idea for a Facebook app to the lean method a couple of years ago. His app, BlueSpark, would prompt users to record their purchases, then send a status update telling their friends. Those friends would then download the app, creating a viral sensation. Brilliant, right? But rst, Howe built a simple software script to test his idea on real users. He quickly ascertained that they were hor-ried. Facebook used to be about shar-ing poetry! one said. Howe dropped the idea. Two competitors, meanwhile, went on to spend millions building their own purchase- alert apps. Nine months later, they threw in the towel, citing hostile reactions. By that time, Howe had already moved on to his next idea.Riess method encourages entrepre-neurs to fail fast and quickly abandon ideas that arent working. Yet that may mean giving up too soon, skeptics such as investor Marc Andreessen have cautioned. Some of the most important products everlike the Macintosh computercame to exist against the odds and gained popularity only through perseverance and brilliant marketing. Ted Greenwaldnot looking for an electronic version of guidelines, says Mark Kris, a cancer spe-cialist at Sloan-Kettering. You dont need Watson to do that. We want a machine that doctors can turn to as an advisor and colleague.Even so, Kris says, IBM is planning to launch a product for cancer centers this spring (IBM declined to comment). That system will make recommendations for treating several cancers based on manu-ally organized inputsstructured data. It will also interpret text notes for lung and breast cancers with reasonable accu-racy. While that falls short of the highest hopes for what a system like Watson can do, it may be good enough for a commer-cial product.We do have further to go, but so does this business, says IBMs High. This [was] the right time to move forward with a bigger investment. Antonio Regaladono one wanted to hang out in it. But how could any startup be sure it was building the next iPod, and not the next Zune?Riess approach, synthesizing ideas from Japanese manufacturing, software development, and the scientic method, has proved to be catnip to Silicon Valley geeks. Riess 2011 book, The Lean Startup, became a best-seller, and awareness for his ideas approaches 100 percent in entre-preneurial circles, says Tom Eisenmann, who runs the entrepreneurship program at Harvard Business School. A large frac-tion of teams think theyre following lean startup precepts whether they are or not. Among Riess promoters are Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, a company looking for ways to supercharge development of jet engines, power tur-bines, and refrigerators. Entrepreneurs from as far away as the United Arab Emir-ates and Beijing are also embracing the method as a kind of ready-mix formula for emulating Silicon Valley.In Riess view, technology riskthe chance that a company cant build what it sets out to buildisnt the problem any-more. Market risk, on the other hand, is a killer. The problem is that businesses often conceptualize, design, and produce a product before they correctly gauge a market reaction. Riess method decon-structs these sorts of high-risk bets into a plethora of low-stakes gambles that can be tested on real-world customers. The idea is to run a series of experiments as quickly and inexpensively as possible, so that by the time you launch your product, you can be reasonably certain that customers will clamor for it.20406080100A Business Theory Catches OnFrequency of Google searches for lean startup, a popular product development approach.*SOURCE:

Creative DirectorPrint ProducerAccount Mgt.Production Mgt.Proof ReaderBY APPROVALS Production:Art Director:Copywriter:Account Mgr:Print Prod:Color/BW: Fonts:NoneStart with big data. End with an unfair advantage.Splunk software collects and analyzes machine-generated big data and transforms it into real-time Operational Intelligencevaluable insight that can make your business more productive and protable.Over two-thirds of the Fortune 100 and more than 300 leading universities use Splunk software and have the business results to prove it. See how at splunk.com/listen 2014 Splunk Inc. All rights reserved. Fortune 100 is a registered trademark of the FORTUNE magazine division of Time Inc.i20436_2a_MIT.indd01.24.14133 L/SJBH20436x01A_3u.tif TRFULLPG.indt 1 2/3/14 4:10 PM70TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2Reviewsoogle glass shares much of its electronics and software with the smartphone, but its a very diferent machine. You hold a smart-phone in your hand. And we doat restaurants, at the mov-ies, walking across the street, and even in bed. We use smartphones to check our mail, update Facebook, get driving directions, search the Internet to settle bets, and, sometimes, even to make calls. But Glass you wear on your face, and that fundamentally transforms all these human-computer interactions, making them more intimate. Because you dont use your hands, and because it projects an image onto a transparent screen sus-pended in front of your eye and uses a vibration to stimulate your inner ear, using Glass is like being naked with the machine: synapses and wires united.Glass is a head-mounted computer with a camera and a microphone. It sees what you see, hears what you hear. But Glass is not for life logging; unlike cameras such as the Narrative Clip, it is not intended to document your day. The battery doesnt have enough juice, and theres no organizing software. Glass is an always-ready smart device that answers your questions, alerts you to messages, and gives you driving directions. The see-through display is just out of your direct line of sight. When you choose to con-sult the display, it looks like a smartphone screen held eight inches from your face. But when you are doing something else, Glass is easy to ignore. Googles challenge in making the device a successful con-sumer product will be convincing the peo-ple around you to ignore it as well. Yet for them, Glass is hard to ignore. Its not clear whether thats because its so new or whether there is something inher-ently intrusive about this kind of device. When others look at me wearing Glass, the rst thing they see is a plastic boom over my right eye with a cam-era pointed straight at them. Are they being lmed? Theres a small translucent prismthe glasswith a tiny illuminated rectan-gle that no one else can read. Am I pay-ing attention to them, or to it? What is it whispering? They cant hear.When I raise a conventional camera to my eyes and press a button, the people around me assume Im taking a picture. With Glass, I can take a picture with a wink. If I hold down the button on the touch pad built into the side of the device, Glass starts recording a video and contin-ues until I stop it, or until the device runs out of storage space or its battery dies. Glass is a marvel of integration and miniaturization, even though the specs dont seem that impressive. The camera records ve-megapixel (2528x1856) stills and high-denition (720p) video. It has a dual-core OMAP4430 processor. All that sounds like 2011 technology. But the slower, older processor, combined with the low-power display, lets Glass provide ve to eight hours of intermittent use on a smaller battery. The result is that Glass weighs only 42 grams, and since the tita-nium headband distributes that weight across my cranium, the nose weight is similar to that of my ultralight 14-gram rimless eyeglasses.The processor inside Glass is pow-erful enough, because most of the pro-cessing doesnt happen on your face; it happens in the cloud. Glass reaches the Internet using its internal Wi-Fi radio or by sharing your cell phones data con-nection over Bluetooth, a process called tethering. Sound enters your head via a bone conduction transducer that presses just over the ear. Bone conduc-tion offers surprisingly good bass and midrange, but the treble is mushy. Better sound can be had from the included mono earbud that plugs into the micro-USB port, or through a pair of stereo buds ($85). The user interface is based on voice-activated menus and a timeline thats lled with cards, simi-lar to the Google Now app available for Android and iOS. You navigate the time-line by dragging your finger across the touch pad. Each photo you snap is pinned to the timeline, as are New York Times headlines, Google+ status updates, e-mail messages, and notices from other Glass-ware applications. Theres also a Web browser, but its practically useless on such a small screen. The Glass communityGlass is not ready for general use, and Google knows it. Todays device is too dif-ferent from existing mobile computers (cell phones, laptops, or car navigation systems), its software too immature, and the whole concept too geeky for it to be a successful mass-market product.Google Glass Explorer Edition (version 2), Software Release XE12$1,500Glass, Darkly For its wearable computer to be accepted, Google must convince people that the device isnt creepy.By Simson GarnkelGMA14_reviews_glass.indd 70 2/5/14 3:00 PM71 Illustration by Victor KerlowMA14_reviews_glass.indd 71 2/5/14 3:00 PM

TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. | NO. Instead, Google spent much of 2013 gradually releasing Glass to increas-ing numbers of Glass Explorers, cho-sen because the company felt sure they would be relentlessly enthusiastic about the technology. The first 2,000 were attendees who signed up at the com-panys June 2012 developer conference. Next were the winners of a microblogging contest: the people who wrote the 8,000 best tweets and Google+ status updates that contained the hashtag #ihadglass. They were permitted to pay $1,500 and travel to Googles offices in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco to be tted with the device, a process that included several hours of training. (Some likenedthe experience of being invited into the Explorer program to finding a golden ticket to Willy Wonkas chocolate factory.) The pr ice, travel, and time commitment ensured that Explorers would be per-sonally invested in working with Google to improve the product. Explorers were paying test subjects, voluntarily turning their homes, workplaces, and friends into Googles living laboratory.A wave of positive publicity followed. A startup named CrowdOptic gave Glass to some Stanford University cheerleaders, players, and coaches for a few football and basketball gamesthe video is short and shaky, but its like hanging with the teams! Several surgeons have used Glass in the operati ng theater. iJustine, a pretty You-Tube personality, uploaded her ve-min-ute review in June; it attracted 1.2 million views within six mon ths. The September 2013 issue of Vogue featured Glass in a 12-page photo shoot. The campaign made wearing Glass seem open, fun, upbeat, hipeven wholesome. Explorers posted smiling seles and videos: a rst-person rolle r-coaster ride, a walk through a park, or a touching moment with a child (all shot #throughglass). Looking at the images, even those of us who weren t Explor-ers felt connected. Its a very different feeling from actually standing next to an Explorer; then I feel that Im being observed, monitored, and analyzed. Or worse, that Im being ignored. The Explorers, meanwhile, have become a community. Explorers give advice to newbies and pro vide trouble-shooting advice. Battery life? One REVIEWSMaking It MiniGlass is a marvel of integration and miniaturization, even though the specs dont seem that impressive.Glass is loaded with input devices, includ-ing this touch pad and a nine-axis sen-sor (three-axis ac-celeration, three-axis rotation, three-axis magnetometer).The tiny prism that is the Glass display may seem futuristic, but its the descen-dant of technology thats more than two decades old.The slower, older dual-core OMAP4430 processor, combined with the low-power display, conserves battery life.The camera records ve-megapixel (2528x1856) stills and high-def (720p) video.Sound enters your head via a bone conduction transducer that presses just over the ear.COURTESY OF SCOTT TORBORG AND STAR SIMPSONMA14_reviews_glass.indd 72 2/6/14 1:02 PMARE YOU READY FOR THE NEXT DIGITAL REVOLUTION?LEAD YOUR DIGITAL ENTERPRISEWednesday, May 21, 2014 | Full day event | MIT Kresge Auditorium | Cambridge, MAPanel topics may change as we continue to refine the program. Check our website for the latest agenda.11th ANNUAL MIT SLOAN CIO SYMPOSIUMThe MIT Sloan CIO Symposium combines the academic thought leadership of MIT with the in-the-trenches experience of global CIOs. It is the premier international conference for CIOs and business leaders to look beyond day-to-day issues and explore enterprise innovations in technology and business practices.PANELS INCLUDE: CEO Keynote Panel Creating the Digital Vision CIO Keynote PanelLeading the Digital Enterprise Academic PanelAre You Ready for the Shifting Frontier of Mind and Machine?* Big Data, Analytics, and Insights Tracking Business Technology Value in the Digital Enterprise Security, Privacy and Availability in the Digital Enterprise How Critical is the CIO-CMO Partnership to the Digital Enterprise? Will CIOs Still Be Relevant in the Future? Transforming Digital Silos to Digital HealthCare Enterprise*The academic panel will highlight a portion of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfees new book, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant TechnologiesTo register and for updated information on speakers, sessions, the Innovation Showcase, nominations for the CIO Leadership Award, and sponsorship opportunities, visit:www.mitcio.comTRFULLPG.indt 1 2/3/14 4:11 PM74TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2Explorer developed a free app that tells how much power is left; another started a company that makes PWRglass, a com-bination lanyard and external battery that nearly triples battery life. Most of the tech problems are easily solved. But the thornier questions about privacyor, rather, privacy perceptionsarent going away. Glass users report being accosted by people who feel sure they are being recorded. The problem: how do you prove youre not taking a picture? (A com-mon suggestion in the forumto add a lit-tle red lighthas two obvious problems: it could be hacked so that it would not light up, and it would make Glass seem even more obnoxious when it actually is recording.)Last December, Google opened up the Glass Explorer program to all sub-scribers to the companys $9.99-a-month music streaming service.

The price is still $1,500, but now Google will ship the product directly to anyone. (Well, almost anyone. An employee of the MIT Enter-prise Forum, which is managed by MIT Technology Review, bought a Glass unit in this fashion and lent it to me. But Google says it is not yet lending Glass to journal-ists for conventional product reviews, on the grounds that the Explorer edition is not a fully formed consumer product. This review is therefore unauthorized.) Presumably that high price will still lter out people who might be intimidated by stares. But for Glass to be successful, the broader public has to accept it as well. Otherwise, Glass will remain a tool for specialized users like those surgeons.Evolutionary, not revolutionaryThe rst true wearable computer was a foot-controlled machine that the math-ematicians Edward Thorp and Claude Shannon invented to help them win at roulette. That computer was built in Shannons basement lab and then (its said) tested at a Las Vegas casino in 1961. Others developed shoe-based computers for counting cards in 1983. These clandes-tine computers gave their wearers super-human capabilities, but they needed to remain secret to work as intended. On-your-face wearables showed up a few years later. These machines were all about cognition: enhancing the wearers ability to remember, record, and retrieve information. The defining characteris-tics of machines from this era were their headgearwearable displays that put a video image in front of the users eyeand one-handed chording keyboards that were hard to master. These machines drew stares when people walked around with them, and their users (most of them academic researchers) proudly called themselves cyborgs. They reveled in their outlandish appearance, between geek and punk.Back in 2001, wearable-computing pioneer Thad Starner (a Media Lab alum-nus, now a professor at Georgia Tech, a consultant to Google, and the intellectual powerhouse behind Glass) wrote about the challenges faced by wearables in IEEE Micro. Revisiting those articles 13 years later, one can see that three key problems remain: input, output, and software. Input: Glass is loaded with input devices, including a camera capable of recording stills and videos, a touch pad, and a nine-axis sensor (three-axis accel-eration, three-axis rotation, three-axis magnetometer). But getting words into a wearable remains a challenge. Glass does away with the chording keyboard, using speech recognition instead. Googles voice recognition works extremely well for navi-gating menus, because its easy to match a second of speech with one of a dozen possible menu choices. The technology is not as reliable for captioning photos and replying to messages, but with prac-tice and patience it can be astonishingly accuratethough you cant mind people overhearing what you are saying. Output: The tiny prism that is the Glass display may seem futuristic, but its the descendant of technology thats more than two decades old. Back in the 1990s a company called Reection Technology developed a similar system called the Pri-vate Eye. It was a plastic box the size of a modern cell phone that used fancy optics to put a virtual screen in front of the users face. These screens were indispensable to the wearable-computer inventors of the 1990s, but because they were big and obscured the eye, they did as much as any-REVIEWSMaking a MarketHow do you de-geekify a smartphone for your face? If youre Google, you attempt to create demand with a strategy built around exclusivity and community.DO: Give rst dibs to the true believers: attendees at your corporate developer conference.DO: Release it to increasing numbers of Glass Explorers, each properly vetted for enthusiasm and street cred.DO: Share it with the people who ignored you as a Stanford undergrad: the coaches and cheer-leaders.DO: Attempt to lure the hipster demo-graphic by designing fashionably chunky frames.DONT: Let it fall into the hands of this guy (pictured, author of the review).COURTESY OF GOOGLE; COURTESY OF SIMSON GARFINKELMA14_reviews_glass.indd 74 2/6/14 8:57 AMTECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM REVIEWSthing to make the early users resemble cyborgs. Compared with the Private Eye, todays Glass display is small and fairly unobtrusive. The other output is audio. Todays Glass uses audio to read text, to play music, and for alerts, but not for much else. Software: As with many pieces of information technology, the biggest chal-lenge for users will not be the hardware but the software. Glass is clearly useful, but its voice-based interface relies on menus that must be spoken in a particu-lar sequence, rather than free-formatted commands that can be issued in any order. For example, if you say Okay, Glass take a picture, the system expects that if you wish to share the image you must next choose how to share it, then select a recipient, then add a caption, all in that precise sequence. Users will want to utter unformatted commandsfor example, so you can take three pictures in a row. Likewise, the system for alerts and notifications is in desperate need of a redesign with a heavy dose of artificial intelligence and user modeling. Instant notications are an annoyance if youre getting 200 e-mail messages a day. Glass is quite literally in your face. It knows not only where you are but whether you are walking or standing still, whether you are talking to someone, whether that person is talking back, and more. Yet messages from my predefined Glass Contacts interrupt no matter what I am doing, while others are silenced even if Im bored. Knowing when its the right time to inter-rupt and when it is not will take more research, and it will probably require algo-rithms that adapt to each user. The Glass hardware also has its critics, most notably Steve Mann, who has been developing wearable technology since he was in high school 35 years ago. Mann, a Media Lab cyborg in the 1990s and now a professor at the University of Toronto, says that the Glass display will force each eye to focus at a diferent distance when images are overlayed on the real world, which could cause eyestrain or dissoci-ation in some people. Manns headgear employs a diferent design that pro-jects images into the eyeball with a double-sided mir-ror and a pinhole proj ect or, sup-porting a range of augmented real-ity applications like one that automati-cally labels buildings when you look out at an unfamiliar city. Its astounding to me that Google and other companies now seeking to market head-wearable computers with cameras and displays havent leapfrogged over my best design, Mann wrote last year in IEEE Spectrum. (See Manns View on page 10 to read more of his thoughts on wearable computing.) Google says that Glass is designed the way it is because eye contact is important to humans. (Even Manns most discreet display prevents eye-to-eye contact.) Google probably made the right call for a mass-market, always-worn display. A Glass camera and screen that obstructed the pupil would have a hard time as a consumer product, at least in this decade.Glass and the lawIn October 2013, Glass Explorer Cecilia Abadie was pulled over for speeding by the California Highway Patrol. When Google says that Glass is designed the way it is because eye contact is important to humans. A screen that obstructed the pupil would have a hard time as a product.MA14_reviews_glass.indd 75 2/5/14 3:00 PM76TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2the officer noticed her Glassonshe received an additional charge for hav-ing a TV screen visible while driving. Is #GoogleGlass ilegal [sic] while driving or is this cop wrong? she posted. Abadies ticket was thrown out a month later for lack of evidence: the cop didnt see Glass enabled while she was driving, and he couldnt prove the radar gun had been properly calibrated. Never-theless, California, at least 37 other states, and the District of Columbia all have laws prohibiting the operation of in-car TV screens that can be seen by the driver, says Russ Martin, manager for state rela-tions at AAA, the motorists association. In case Google Glass falls into some kind of loophole, lawmakers in Illinois, Dela-ware, New Jersey, and West Virginia have proposed specic bans on using wearable computers with head-mounted displays while driving.I would not use Glass while driving, but I did use the turn-by-turn directions app while my wife drove us to a party. Im glad I was in the passenger seat. I spent so much time ddling with Glass that I would almost certainly have veered off the road, driven through a stop sign, or worse. The issue isnt taking my eyes ofthe roadits that Glass steals away my attention. AAAs Martin backs me up, pointing to a growing body of research showing that hands-free cell-phone use offers no safety benefits over handheld cell-phone use and that voice-activated texting or e-mailing is one of the most mentally distracting activities a driver can engage in.Googles legalese-lled disclaimer that appears when the navigation app starts up seems to be in agreement with AAA but goes even further: Please keep your eyes on the road and obey applicable laws. Do not manipulate this application while in motion. Directions may be inaccurate, incomplete, dangerous, not suitable, or prohibited. Data is not real-time, and location accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Tap to continue. Using Glass while driving is prob-ably more dangerous than listening to the radio, but its probably less danger-ous than texting with your iPhone. Whats more, Glass might have untold safety ben-etstheres an app called DriveSafe that uses the tilt sensor to determine if you are falling asleep at the wheel and directs you to a rest area. Perhaps apps like DriveSafe, combined with an updated navigation app that has a better understanding of human cognition, will one day make the benets of driving with Glass outweigh the risks.Even nondrivers are likely to find a growing number of places where they cant use Glass. A hip restaurant in Seat-tle banned the device, for example. We want our customers to feel comfortable, not like theyre being watched, Jason Lajeunesse, an owner of the Lost Lake Caf and Lounge, told Forbes. Glass is banned at casinos, of course. Google banned Glass at one of its own press events. And if you are visiting Washington, D.C., you would be well advised to remove your Glass before visiting the White House, the Pentagon (including its Metro station), the House and Senate galleries, or the Supreme Court.The other kinds of rules Glass users need to understand are Googlesrules enforced by license agreements with Glass app developers, designed to preserve the devices aura of wholesomeness. Google has so far banned the use of facial recog-nition or voice prints to identify a person or present personal information identi-fying anyone other than the user. Google also prohibits use of the camera when the display is turned of, perhaps because taking pictures when the machine is not visibly on might seem sneaky. Last sum-mer, Google banned a sexually explicit app called Tits & Glass. But there is sure to be pressure for adult-themed software. Developers have skirted Googles rules, of course. A company called FacialNetwork has developed an app called NameTag that looks through Glass, quickly queries a database, and tells you if the person you are looking at is one of 450,000 registered sex offenders (or a near likeness, anyway). Another app, called Sex with Google Glass, will allow to people to see themselves through their partners eyes, turn out the lights, and even have the computer suggest new ideas. These apps arent in Googles store, but you can side load them by putting Glass in developer mode and transferring them by micro-USB. But that would be creepy.All the worlds a stage Much of the initial excitement about Glass concerns users ability to blog with point-of-view photos and video. But as REVIEWSMaking a MythAn early simulation showed how Glass users would avoid everyday annoyances through an elegantly designed augmented-reality interface (below).COURTESY OF GOOGLEBut when the actual user interface turned out to be more prosaic, the activities depicted in promotional videos for Glass became more exciting (above).MA14_reviews_glass.indd 76 2/5/14 3:00 PMTECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMGlassware improves, were likely to see a proliferation of new applications that are more useful, like a Word Lens app thats able to instantly translate text between English and ve other languages. For Google itself, Glass is compel-ling because it makes Google an irre-vocable part of the wearers life. Glass provides Google with hugely personal, sensitive datajust the thing for a com-pany that aims to organize the worlds information and gets about 90 percent of its revenue from advertising. I expect the cost of Glass to drop toward $300, because Google will subsidize its use. The platform will be licensed to other manufacturers, just like Android. Already Hyundai has announced that its 2015 Genesis luxury sedan will have a Glass app that will unlock and start the car or help the user nd it in a parking lot, among other things.So far, the biggest problems I ve encountered with Glass involve the dis-play. A friend who has no vision problems reported eyestrain and a mild headache after using Glass for half an hour. My left-handed wife reports total frustra-tion from having to use the device with her right eyeapparently her left is the dominant one. Glass isnt for everyone, reads the Glass FAQ, adding that people who have had Lasik surgery should consult a doc-tor rst. Dont let children under 13 use Glass as it could harm developing vision, the FAQ continues, although I suspect that the magic number 13 is more about the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act, which prevents companies from col-lecting data on youngsters without their parents consent, and less about a childs developing ocular system. In any event, Google ofers those who bought Glass and cant use it a full refund. Glass clearly has signicant oppor-tunities for industrial, scientific, and medical applications. I also think that it could revolutionize the lives of the dis-abled. Glass can be a head-mounted eye for those with poor vision. It can deliver clear, understandable instructions to those who are cog-nitively impaired. It can let those who are paralyzed navigate the Web and communicate. Although decades of experience have gone into develop-ing assistive technology for the disabled, it has often been too expensive for the intended users. With Glass they will be able to get the hardware for the price of a few fancy dinners. Maybe as Glass becomes more useful to more people, it will become common-place. Future wearables won t gener-ate stares if a lot of people are wearing them. But for many, I think, Glass faces an insurmountable problem. Its ugly as sin and impossible to miss. One of my friends, an Android developer and techno- utopian, says he understands the concepthes even got an Android watchbut hes not interested in Glass. He has perfect vision and doesnt want to wear something on his head. Hes waiting for the implanted version. Simson Garnkel is a contributing editor to MIT Technology Review and a professor of computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School. His last article for the magazine was Windows 8: Design over Usability (March/April 2013). REVIEWSMaybe as Glass becomes more useful to more people, it will become commonplace. Future wearables wont generate stares if a lot of peo-ple are wearing them. MIT Technology Reviews Professional ResourcesServicesEDELMAN & ASSOCIATESFinding technical and management talent for software, nancial services and other technology-driven companiesPaul Edelman, 78paul@edeltech.comRick Kunin, 79rick@edeltech.comFor condential consideration, send your resume to paul@edeltech.com. We love working with fellow MIT alums.www.edeltech.com508-947-5300EventsMIT Technology Review Digital SummitJune 9-10, 2014San Francisco, CAwww.technologyreview.com/summit

Open Innovations Forum and ExhibitionOctober 30 November 1, 2014Moscow, Russiahttp://forinnovations.org/To place your event, program or recruit-ment ad in MIT Technology Reviews Professional Resources, please contact amy.lammers@technologyreview.comMA14_reviews_glass.indd 77 2/5/14 3:00 PM78TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2Making ConversationThe charming automated assistant in the movie Her isnt realistic. But computerized interlocutors, if they were designed thoughtfully, might make us better people.By Greg EganIn the movie Her, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture this year, a middle-aged writer named Theodore Twombly installs and rapidly falls in love with an articially intelligent operating system who christens herself Samantha.Samantha lies far beyond the faux articial intelligence of Google Now or Siri: she is as unambiguously conscious as any human. The lms director and writer, Spike Jonze, employs this premise for lim-ited and prosaic ends, so the lm limps along in an uncanny valley, neither believ-able as near-future reality nor philosophi-cally daring enough to merit suspension of disbelief. Nonetheless, Her raises ques-tions about how humans might relate to computers. Twombly is sufering a painful separation from his wife; can Samantha make him feel better? Samanthas self-awareness does not echo real-world trends for automated assistants, which are heading in a difer-ent direction. Making personal assistants chatty, let alone flirtatious, would be a huge waste of resources, and most people would find them as irritating as the infamous Micro-soft Clippy. But it doesnt necessarily follow that these qualities would be unwelcome in a difer-ent context. When dementia suferers in nursing homes are invited to bond with robot seal pups and psychiatric conditions are being addressed with automated dia-logues and therapy sessions, it can only be a matter of time before someone tries to create an app that helps people overcome ordinary loneliness. Suppose it becomes possible to feel genuinely engaged by rep-artee with a piece of software. What would that mean for the human participants?Perhaps this prospect sounds absurd or repugnant. But some people already take comfort from immersion in the lives of fictional characters. And much as I wince when I hear someone say that my best friend growing up was Elizabeth Bennet, no one would treat it as evidence of psychotic delusion. Over the last two centuries, the mainstream perceptions of novel reading have traversed a full spectrum: once seen as a threat to public morality, it has become a badge of empa-thy and emotional sophistication. Its rare now to hear claims that ction is sapping its readers of time, energy, and emotional resources that they ought to be devoting to actual human relationships.Of course, characters in Jane Austen novels cannot banter with the readerand its another question whether it would be a travesty if they couldbut what Im envisaging is not characters from fiction brought to life, or even characters in a game world who can REVIEWSHer (2013)Directed by Spike JonzeR.

KIKUO

JOHNSONMA14_reviews_her.indd 78 2/3/14 2:15 PMconduct more realistic dialogue with human players. A software interlocu-toran SIwould require some kind of invented back story and an ongoing life of its own, but these elements need not have been chosen as part of any great dramatic arc. Gripping as it is to watch a drug baron in a death spiral, or Raskol-nikov dragged toward his creators idea of redemption, the ideal SI would be more like a pen pal living an ordinary life but ready to discuss anything from the mun-dane to the metaphysical.There are some obvious pitfalls to be avoided. It would be disastrous if the user really fell for the illusion of personhood, but then, most of us manage to keep the distinction clear in other forms of ction. An SI that could be used to rehearse path-ological fantasies of abusive relationships would be a poisonous thingbut con-versely, one that stood its ground against attempts to manipulate or cow it might even do some good. The art of conversa-tion, of listening attentively and weigh-ing each response, is not a universal gift, any more than any other skill. Honing ones conversational skills with a com-puterdiscovering your strengths and weaknesses while enjoying a chat with a character that is no less interesting for failing to existmight well lead to better conversations with fellow humans.But perhaps this is an overoptimistic view of where the market lies; self-knowl-edge might not make the strongest selling point. The dark side that Her never really contemplates, despite a brief, desultory feint in its direction, is that one day we might give our hearts to a charming voice in an earpiece, only to be brought crashing down by the truth that weve been emot-ing into the void. Greg Egan is a computer programmer and science-ction author. His story Zero for Conduct appears in MIT Technology Reviews SF anthology Twelve Tomorrows.REVIEWSJoin us in examining dramatic advancements in the eld of neuroengineering, the emergence of the Internet of Things and new computing platforms driving the next wave of connected devices, and emerging technologies focused on providing clean energy and food for 9 billion people.EmTech MIT A Place of InspirationIts an opportunity to glimpse the future and begin to understand the technologies that matterhow theyll change the face of business and drive the new global economy.technologyreview.com/emtechSAVE THE DATESeptember 2325, 2014MIT Media LabCambridge, MAad.emtech14.23vert.indd 1 1/28/14 2:58 PM MA14_reviews_her.indd 79 1/31/14 4:48 PM80TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2Bitcoin, a purely digital currency, is backed by no commodity and gov-erned by no central bank, but it exists because a small number of humans have chosen to believe in its legitimacy. Its pseudonymous creator (or, more likely, creators) Satoshi Nakamoto willed it into existence in 2009, not only describing how the so-called cryptocur-rency would work but shipping a full working implementation. The original software had all the hallmarks of a gag or hack: a great, metastasizing practical joke played by clever cyberlibertarian coders upon all who put their faith in at (that is, government-backed) currencies. Then came the believers. Today, there are thousands of people loyal to the ide-ology and opportunities that Bitcoin rep-resents. They imagine a world where economies are less dependent on banks and governments, and theyre actually using Bitcoin, often in disruptive ways. The currency had a rocky start when it became the medium of exchange for illegal drug transactions on Silk Road, but that huge narcotics marketplace was shut down last October and its founder arrested. Indeed, the currency seems more or less respectable. Since Bitcoin is essentially a kind of transaction log, where past transactions are public and known to the world, it is of great interest to prosecutors, who have cal l ed the coins Prosecu-tion Futures. Last year, even U.S. Fed-eral Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke gave them his cautious endorsement. Bitcoin may or may not become a commonly used currency. As a form of money, it is an established medium of exchange; but so far it is a poor store of value. (See Bitcoin Economics, page 12.) More than 60 percent of the bitcoins created remain unspent: they are being hoarded speculatively. (No wonder: the value of an individual bitcoin, which was less than a dollar in January 2009, was around $932 in early February.) Those unspent coins could ood the market at any time, depressing their value. Even now, the bitcoins value uctuates wildly.But while it may be wishful thinking to imagine Bitcoin as a true currency, its a highly functional and efective technology. Bitcoins block chain protocol is built atop well-understood, established crypto-graphic standards and allows perfect cer-tainty about which transactions occurred when. Nakamotos original paper is admi-rably clear. Free and open implementa-tions of software, as we learned from the immense success of the open World Wide Web and Linux, trump everything else. Money from nothingWhat can you do with bitcoins, or with cryptocurrencies in general? You can spend them, of course. You can hold them in a digital wallet. But whereas at cur-rency is minted by a sovereign entity of some sort, you can make new digital moneyin fact, its the only way currency can be created. The process, called min-ing in the Bitcoin vernacular, involves repeatedly running a computationally intensive mathematical function (called a cryptographic hash function) on a set REVIEWSMarginally Useful Bitcoin itself may not ourish as a currency, but the underlying technology is beginning to suggest valuable new applications.By Paul Ford Bitcoinbitcoin.orgJON

HANMA14_reviews_bitcoin.indd 80 2/4/14 4:43 PMof randomly seeded inputs until a specic pattern pops up. Many computers all over the world are racing to solve the same functionbut typically only one wins. The results are publicized on the Internet for the rest of the Bitcoin network. To create scarcity, the Bitcoin system is designed so that over time the function becomes harder and harder to solve (and therefore requires more computer resources). The number of bitcoins given out as a reward is halved at regular intervals. After 21 mil-lion coins have been created, mining stops and no more can be created. For some people, this means Get in now!often using specialized, expensive mining rigs.There are other ways to participate in the crypto-economy. Some people have built exchanges, and others have built web-sites that track the entire transaction his-tory of every coin or fraction of a coin. Still others have built gambling websites like Satoshi Dice, which allow punters to gam-ble in a weird, automated fashion.If you already feel jaded about Bit-coin, there are alternatives. Litecoin is a version of Bitcoin that can be mined with regular computers. Dogecoin is a varia-tion on the Litecoin idea that was named after an Internet meme featuring a proud Shiba Inu dog. It is trading vigorously; $30,000 in Dogecoin was raised to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the 2014 winter Olympics. Hundreds of such cur-rencies now exist, such as TeslaCoin or ElephantCoin. They difer in the hashing algorithms they use, the number of coins they make available over time, and other details. Each of them hopes to nd a sweet spot in the emerging global cryptocur-rency marketplace. Most interestingly, cryptocurren-cies can be used for purposes other than those that conventional currencies fulll. For example, Namecoin is a system used to create and exchange domain names: the coins contain information about the domain names themselves. Recall that the REVIEWSBeyond the Checkout CartDiscover why mobile phones, social networks, and in-store tracking are blurring the diference between online and of ine retail. Download the full Business Report today for only $20.technologyreview.com/businessreportsStay ahead of the technology that matters to your business.MA14_reviews_bitcoin.indd 81 2/4/14 4:43 PM82 82TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2domain name market has about $3 billion in revenue per year: its a good example of a weird, scarce digital resource. And Bitmessage is a Bitcoin-inspired messag-ing platform that allows for anonymous (or at least pseudonymous) communi-cation. What Namecoin and Bitmessage share is that they allow data to be added to the transaction, making the exchange one not just of perceived value but also of information.Or take digital art. Larry Smith, a partner at the business architecture con-sultancy Thematix and an analyst with long experience in digital advertising and digital nance, asks us to imagine digital items that cant be reproduced. If we attached a coin identier to a digital image, Smith says, we could now call that a unique, one-of-a-kind digital entity. Media on the Internetwhere unlim-ited copying and sharing has become a scourge to rights holderswould sud-denly be provably unique, permanently identied, and attached to an unambigu-ous monetary value. Smith believes that cryptocurrencies will have wide application across busi-ness and culture, including both banking and online advertising. For banks, Bitcoin is just a new source of money, he sug-gests. Banks are very hungry to advance their value through technology. Its easy to imagine, say, HSBCoin, or Barclays-Bucks, giving investors who want choice in the currencies they use the services of a trusted nancial brand.And what of the enormous revenue-generating engine of online advertising? Advertisers pay to reach highly valued online audiences; they use a variety of technologies, many surprisingly inef-fective, to nd these individuals. Could cryptocurrencies help? Smith asks us to consider the following scenario: imagine a brand like Dunkin Donuts that wanted to create a loyalty program. Now imag-ine that brand creating its own currency: DunkinDollars. Finally, imagine an online advertising campaign where people who clicked on an advertise-ment woul d be given the virtual coins. Small amounts of money might be distributed without friction. If large brands could create their own currencies and allow individuals to participate in this marketplace, they could create consumers who were truly invested, in every sense.The entire web of advertising would suddenly become a more interesting place. Before, the ads seemed to hunt you, but now you would have reason to hunt for ads. The coins you earned could then be exchanged for branded goods, but they could also be exchanged on an open mar-ket, like a kind of penny stock. Pay con-sumers for clicks and acquisitions, says Smith, dening this new kind of model.The idea of paying people to look at ads was tried during the last Internet boom (by the startups AllAdvantagethe dumbest dot.com in the world, according to CNN Moneyand the infa-mous FreePC). And failed virtual curren-cies such as Beenz and Flooz preceded the success of Bitcoin. But there might be advantages to trying again with the newer cryptocurrencies: offering more value to consumers might make the idea work this time. Right now, the cookie model of Web tracking is dominant; ads are just media objects. But cryptocur-rency-mining software, written in Java- Script, has been demonstrated running in a Web browser; you can break up the task of mining and parallelize it. So an advertiser could treat ads as executable software, creating a multimillion-node supercomputer cluster. By engaging with an ad, the user might earn virtual cur-rency while mining and verifying transac-tions in the network. Perhaps the future of advertising will involve a new set of activities for consumers, as yet unknown. A post-scarcity economyExpand banking, make digital art unique, reinvent online advertisingthese are just some of the things Bitcoin might do. In response to the perceived opportuni-ties, the venture capital community has entered a state of hallucinatory excite-ment about cryptocurrencies, with Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape and the venture rm Andreessen Horowitz, performing as the principal cheerleader. And yet these applications seem prosaically narrow in comparison to the more perfervid claims of Bitcoins cyber-libertarian enthusiasts. (According to a video on bitcoin.org, Bitcoin is changing nance the same way the Web changed publishinga claim that would recom-mend itself only to those who have enjoyed the discomfort of traditional media.) But perhaps thats the point: to succeed, Bit-coin will need to ofer real utility to exist-ing markets. The last two decades have suggested a post-scarcity economy, where innite copies of attractive digital things have a price approaching $0. Maybe that was merely a passing moment that we will look back upon with wonder once limited coins enforce scarcityonce the owner of a piece of digital art can look upon it with satisfaction and know with total, crypto-graphic certainty that because he paid for it, it belongs to him and no one else.Paul Ford is a writer who lives in Brooklyn. His review of new authoring tools, As We May Type, appeared in the November/December 2013 issue. The venture capital community has now entered a state of hallucinatory excitement about cryptocurrencies.REVIEWSMA14_reviews_bitcoin.indd 82 2/6/14 1:09 PMUntitled-1 1 2/6/14 3:07 PM84TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM DEMOMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2a new kind of battery invented by jay whitacre, a professor of materials science at Carnegie Mellon Univer-sity and founder of the startup Aquion Energy, could make renewable electricity more practical and economical around the world. Aquion is about to start full-scale production of the batteries at a new factory in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania.Whitacre says his batteries most promising near-term application lies in storing energy from solar panels or other renewable sources in of-grid homes or rural areas, pro-viding a much cheaper 24-hour power source than a com-mon alternative: diesel power. Lead-acid batteries are used for this purpose today, but they are toxic and require air- conditioning to avoid deterioration in some climates, rais-ing costs. Whitacres batteries are expected to last twice as long as lead-acid batteries and cost about the same to make. They wont require air-conditioning and will use nontoxic materi-als. Electrical current in the battery is generated as sodium DemoStoring the SunAquion manufactures cheap, long-lasting batteries for storing renewable energy.By Kevin Bullis Photographs by Ken Richardson1 2354MA14_demo.indd 84 2/5/14 3:21 PM85TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM DEMOMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 21 Jay Whitacre stands in front of a calciner, which bakes electrode powders made of materials such as manganese oxide. 2 Finished electrode powders emerge from the calciner.3 The granulated electrode mate-rial is pressed into wafers.45 The wafers move along an assem-bly line and are arranged by robot arms for easy stacking.6 A machine picks up the wafers (each square sec-tion picks up four, using suction) and places them in plastic cases.78 The machine lls this empty case, alternating positive and negative elec-trodes with gray foil current collectors and white mem-branes that prevent short circuits. 9 After a lid is put on, a worker, Rox-anne Van Orsdale, cleans the battery.7896MA14_demo.indd 85 2/5/14 11:17 AM86TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM DEMOMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2ions from a saltwater electrolyte shuttle between manganese oxidebased positive electrodes and carbon-based negative ones.One place the battery could make a big diference: in poor regions of the world that lack an existing electric grid. By 2030, one billion people are expected to get electricity for the rst time. That will mean a lot more use of fossil fuels unless renewable power options are as cheap, safe, and reliable as possible. If even a fraction of that billion can use solar because of our batteries, Whitacre says, the company will be able to reduce not only carbon dioxide emissions but also local pollution from diesel generators. To match the cost of lead-acid batteries, which are among the cheapest types, Whitacre uses inexpensive manufacturing equipment repurposed from the food and pharmaceutical indus-tries. Hydraulic presses originally designed to make aspirin pills stamp out wafers of positive and negative electrode materials, and robot arms built to wrap chocolates are used to package elec-trode wafers with foils that act as current collectors. At the end of the line, the briefcase-sized batteries are stacked and bolted together. A pallet of 84 batteries, about a meter tall, will store 19.2 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Whitacre says youd need about 60 such pallets to serve a village of 200 people in a poor country. Two pallets would power a U.S. home for a day.The technology has its limits. It is best suited for slow and steady operation, not rapidly charging and discharging large amounts of power as some utilities require. And while the batter-ies are cheaper than other kinds, pairing them with solar panels still cant beat the economics of conventional power plants in most areas. That is why Whitacre is focusing initially on regions without an existing electricity grid.Aquion has already started shipping batteries to customers for evaluation. The company expects to start full-scale produc-tion by this spring, making enough batteries each year to store about 200 megawatt-hours of electricityenough for roughly 150 solar-powered villages. The factory in Pennsylvania could be replicated in other countries. If our technology proves out, we wont be able to make them fast enough, Whitacre says. 10 Seven batteries are stacked and bolted together. 11 The stacks are arranged on pallets and connected to electrical leads for testing.1011MA14_demo.indd 86 2/5/14 11:17 AMORDER TODAY! 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7 $190SAVEup toIn Optimizing Brain Fitness, award-winning Professor of Neurology Richard Restak teaches you how to improve your memory, sharpen your attention, enhance your learning and creativity, and even fine-tune your sensory acuity all by using one of the most revo-lutionary discoveries in modern neuroscience.Course No. 1651 12 Lectures(30 Minutes/Lecture)In The Secrets of Mental Math, award-winning Professor Arthur T. Benjamin teaches you the basic strategies of mental mathematics. This powerful ability to perform mental calculations will give you an edge in business, at school, at work, or anywhere else that you encounter math.Course No. 1406 12 Lectures(30 Minutes/Lecture)In Experiencing Hubble: Un-derstanding the Greatest Im-ages of the Universe, Professor and Director of the Dearborn Observatory David M. Meyer unlocks the secrets of the uni-verse. In this 12-lecture series, he discusses the most spectacular images ever produced by the Hubble Space telescope.Course No. 188412 Lectures(30 Minutes/Lecture)Untitled-2 1 12/9/13 7:00 PM88TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COMMIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEWVOL. 117 | NO. 2In the last two decades, researchers have begun to stimulate paralyzed limbs electrically in an efort to restore function to paralyzed muscles. At least 12 research centers worldwide are investigating ways to apply, control, and coordinate such electri-cal stimulation, which is called functional neuromuscular stimulation. The results so far are promising: these experimental techniques have enabled a small, carefully selected group of paraplegic patients to walk hundreds of meters in the laboratory, using walkers for support.In all vertebrate animals, motion is accomplished when muscles contract. The muscles are turned on electrically by sig-nals carried by nerves, which form the wiring of the motor-control system. When the spinal cord is injured, motor-control signals from the brain to the muscles may be disconnected. The hope is to develop neural pros-thetic devices that can at least partially replace the function of the injured spi-nal cord. The problem, however, is much more difficult than simply restoring signal transmission. Researchers must nd some way of approximating the extraordinarily complex system for human motor control.All existing neural prostheses work in similar ways. First, the patient generates commands either by making a physical movement or by turning a switch of or on. In some experimental systems, quad-riplegics move their shoulder a certain way and a transducer mounted on the shoulder translates that movement into an electrical signal. This signal then prompts muscles in the hand to contract a certain way. If the person pulls his shoulder back, for instance, his nger and thumb open and extend. In this way, a sequence of diferent shoulder movements can enable a quad-riplegic to grasp and pick up a cofee cup.In most experimental systems for paraplegics, the patient generates binary (on-off ) signals using simple hand switches. The signals are sent to an elec-tronic stimulator, which uses this infor-mation to generate one electrical signal for each electrode. The electrodes carry these signals into the body, where they stimulate specic muscles. When all these muscles are stimulated in the proper sequence, acts such as walking or grasp-ing an objectwhich so many of us take for grantedcan be achieved.The future of eforts to restore muscle function to disabled individuals through the use of electrical stimulation is promis-ing. However, multidisciplinary teams of scientists, engineers, and health-care pro-fessionals will have to work long and hard to solve difcult technical problems before these devices become widely available. This research should not be pressured by premature and exaggerated accounts of success in the popular press, which may raise false hopes among patients and damage the credibility of investigators in the eld.Excerpted from Helping Paraplegics Walk: Looking Beyond the Media Blitz, by Howard Jay Chizeck, from the July 1985 issue of Technology Review.29 Years AgoMIT Technology Review (ISSN 1099-274X), March/April 2014 Issue, Reg. U.S. Patent Office, is published bimonthly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Entire contents 2014. The editors seek diverse views, and authors opinions do not represent the official policies of their institutions or those of MIT. Printed by Brown Printing Company, Waseca, MN. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, MA, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address changes to MIT Technology Review, Subscriber Services Dept., PO Box 16327, North Hollywood, CA 91615, or via the Internet at www.technologyreview.com/customerservice. Basic subscription rates: $39 per year within the United States; in all other countries, US$52. Publication Mail Agreement Number 40621028. Send undeliverable Canadian copies to PO Box 1051 Fort Erie, ON L2A 6C7. Printed in U.S.A. Audited by the Alliance for Audited MediaSlow MotionA 1985 essay saw hope and immense challengesfor systems that might allow paralyzed people to walk again.MA14_years.indd 88 1/30/14 2:44 PMThe award-winning design, quality craftsmanship and unprecedented performance of a Big Ass Fan are always in style.Hidden behind a seamless fit and finish, Haikus revolutionary motor features Whoosh, a proprietary algorithm that simulates a natural breeze to keep you feeling up to 40% cooler*. This Big Ass Fan is recognized by Popular Science as the worlds quietest ceiling fan and rated by ENERGY STAR as the worlds most energy efficient. 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